Ghost in the Machine

After the rush of the previous record, the band took six weeks at AIR Studios on Montserrat, which Copeland described as a 12 hour flight from the nearest record company. Hugh Padgham replaced Nigel Gray as engineer and co-producer. He set the band up in separate rooms of the studio: Summers in the main room, Sting in the control room with his bass plugged into the desk, and Copeland in the dining room to get a live sound. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic was built on a demo Sting recorded at Le Studio in Quebec with the keyboardist Jean Roussel, with Copeland and Summers overdubbing their parts.

It was the first Police album to use keyboards and saxophone heavily, and Sting played all the saxophone parts. The title and much of the material came from Arthur Koestler's book The Ghost in the Machine, and it was the first Police album with an English-language title. The cover shows the three members as sixteen-segment display graphics.

It topped the UK chart for three weeks and reached number two in the US. Invisible Sun reached number two in the UK, Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic reached number one in the UK and number three in the US, and Spirits in the Material World reached number 12 in the UK and 11 in the US. It stands at number 322 on Rolling Stone's 2003 list, and Pitchfork placed it at number 86 on its 2002 list of the best albums of the 1980s.