Reggatta de Blanc

Reggatta de Blanc took four weeks to record, spread over several months, at Surrey Sound with Nigel Gray. A&M had wanted to give the band a bigger studio and a more famous producer, but they stayed put on a budget of between 6,000 and 9,000 pounds. Copeland said they went into the studio and asked who had the first song, without having rehearsed them.

New material was short, so Sting and Copeland reworked older pieces. The lyrics of Bring On the Night came from Sting's Last Exit song Carrion Prince, The Bed's Too Big Without You also began in Last Exit, and Does Everyone Stare grew from a piano piece Copeland wrote in college. No Time This Time had been the B-side of So Lonely in 1978. The title translates loosely from French as white reggae, and the instrumental title track won the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1981.

The album reached number one in the UK, Australia and the Netherlands, and number 25 in the US. Debra Rae Cohen wrote in Rolling Stone in December 1979 that objections to the band's borrowing from new wave and reggae were rendered moot by the energy of their rhythmic counter-punching. It is on Rolling Stone's 2003 list at number 369, and in 2006 it was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Copeland told Modern Drummer it was his favorite Police album.