The Police: Regatta De Blanc | Music Documentary | Henry Padovani | Chris Welch | Hugh Fielder

This unique critical review of a classic pop album features superb performance footage from their sensational 1980 Rockpalast-Nacht show in Germany. It also includes an all-new interview with original guitarist Henry Padovani, in which he gives a candid appraisal of the album and the band.

Reggatta de Blanc is the second studio album by British rock band the Police, released on 2 October 1979 by A&M Records. It was the band's first release to top the UK Albums Chart and features their first two UK number-one singles: "Message in a Bottle" and "Walking on the Moon". In early 1980, the album was reissued in the United States on two 10" discs, one album side per disc, and as a collector's edition with a poster of the band.

The music features the Police's distinctive appropriation of reggae and frontman Sting's Caribbean vocal inflections. The album's title loosely translates in French to "White Reggae". It was the band's second album to bear a Franglais title, after their 1978 debut album Outlandos d'Amour. Reggatta de Blanc proved more popular and successful than its predecessor. The title track earned the band its first Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

Reggatta de Blanc continued to build on the success of Outlandos d'Amour, hitting number one on the British, Australian, and Dutch album charts upon its release in October 1979. "Message in a Bottle" and "Walking on the Moon" were released as singles and both reached number one in the UK, the band's first singles to do so. According to rock journalist Tim Peacock, with its success, the album transformed the Police "into one of the post-punk era's defining bands".

The album was met with positive reviews from magazines such as Smash Hits, People, and Rolling Stone. Writing for the latter in December 1979, Debra Rae Cohen said that objections to the band's stylistic appropriations of new wave and reggae are "rendered moot by the sheer energy of the band's rhythmic counter-punching". In The Village Voice's year-end Pazz & Jop poll of American critics nationwide, Reggatta de Blanc was voted the 35th best album of 1979. Robert Christgau, the poll's creator and the Voice's chief critic, was lukewarm about the album in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): "The idea is to fuse Sting's ringing rock voice and the trio's aggressive, hard-edged rock attack with a less eccentric version of reggae's groove and a saner version of reggae's mix. To me the result sounds half-assed. And though I suppose I might find the 'synthesis' innovative if I heard as much reggae as they do in England, it's more likely I'd find it infuriating." In 1981, the album's title track earned the band a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Greg Prato said that the band's intense touring schedule leading up to the album had made their unique reggae rock fusion sharper, leading to a work that was "much more polished production-wise and fully developed from a songwriting standpoint", but also "more sedate" than their first album.

Reggatta de Blanc has appeared frequently on professional listings of the greatest albums. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked the record at number 369 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time; on an updated version of the list published in 2012, it placed at number 372. In 2006, it was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. In 2014, Spin cited it as one of the major moments in the history of white reggae. Based on such rankings, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists Reggatta de Blanc as the 418th-most acclaimed album in history. In an interview with Modern Drummer, Stewart Copeland named it his favorite Police album.

Director: The Creative Picture Company
Stars: Henry Padovani, Chris Welch, Hugh Fielder, John McKenzie

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