Murder By Numbers

The lyrics describe how to get in the mindset of killing people. Sting said it is about the evil deeds of politicians.

Sting wrote this with guitarist Andy Summers. It was their only collaboration on Synchronicity; besides the songs "Miss Gradenko" (Stewart Copeland) and "Mother" (Summers), the songs on the album were written entirely by Sting.

This was used as the B-side of "Every Breath You Take" but was omitted from the vinyl copy of Synchronicity because there wasn't room for it. At the time, vinyl albums went on sale before cassettes, and CD technology was just emerging. Many people would buy the vinyl copies right away, so leaving this song off encouraged them to also purchase the "Every Breath You Take" single or the Synchronicity cassette.