Give It A Spin

That's Entertainment : Tears For Fears

1985 was a fairly significant year for me. I got my first Sony Walkman and it liberated me from my parents stereo hi fi in the lounge room. No more would I be told to 'turn it down' or 'turn it off' or 'don't rewind that again!'. I could sit in my bedroom playing Donkey Kong Jr on a Game & Watch, practicing dumb magic tricks, surrounded by Rocky IV and Rambo II posters and listen to whatever I damn well pleased. I was also blessed as a nine year old to be living a privileged life in a country that had $1 cassette tapes and a complete and utter disregard to piracy laws. Yep, my youthful years were very unlike today's wasted youth who hole themselves up in their bedrooms playing Nintendo DX and listening to illegally downloaded MP3's on their Ipod.

One band that were massive in 1985 were Tears For Fears. They had TWO #1s in the US of A with Shout and Everybody Wants To Rule The World. Come on...you have to know Shout.

Shout...Shout...write it all out...

Wait...write it all out??? Their 'shouting', so why would they write it all out? Anyway...until the mid-2000's, I thought that was the lyric. Seriously. Don't ask me why. Just another in a long line of Lady Mondegrem's that have littered my musical life.

Anyway, the album they came from was their 2nd LP, called Songs From The Big Chair. You should buy it off I-tunes, or, rifle through LP bins at the market and buy it for a dollar. From start to finish, it is a big, BIG album full of themes and fantastic pop music. It's serious without being pretentious and something you should listen to at least once. The other single that should have been a #1 hit is Head Over Heels. It was used to great effect in the film Donnie Darko. The movie also borrowed Mad World, which was covered, softened and in the race for the UK Xmas #1 single in 2002. Not only that, check out The Big Chair, an instrumental-eqsue piece and the chugging urgency of Broken with it's obligatory 80's guitar sound.

Back to the beginning, The Hurting, and you'll find their original synth pop debut littered with gems aplenty, the two best being Mad World and Change, as well as Pale Shelter. Lead by dual vocalists and multi-instrumentalists Kurt Smith and Roland Orzabel, Tears For Fears wrote smart pop. And they were very much marching to their own beat. When pestered by Bob Geldof to perform at 1985's Live Aid (aka The Global Jukebox) and they politely declined, much to his chagrin. They did, however, re-release Everybody Wants To Run The World as a charity single, on their own terms, making a motza for charity.

However, by the time touring The Big Chair wound up, Roland Orzabel wanted to release an epic album and spent the next 3-4 years perfecting Beatlesque sounds and psychedelic ideals to pop, raising concerns Roland had gone mad. The album The Seeds of Love delivered Sowing The Seeds of Love, an epic the vein of Bohemian Rhapsody, Stairway To Heaven and November Rain for sheer pop eccentricity. Yet lead in song Woman In Chains has to be one of the grandest pro-women / anti-domestic violence songs ever produced. Their is a degree of pompousness to this album, but the production is exquisite. It is totally at odds with the prevailing trends and stands out like a sore thumb amongst your New Kids on the Block and Martika hits.

The album, having taken so long to produce, it debuted directly at #1 on the UK chart and was a huge hit around the world. Key men Orzabel and Smith fell out in 1991 and so by the time 1993's Elemental arrived, Tears For Fears was basically a solo project for Roland Orzabel. But since I think he's the ants pants, the better vocalist and a wonderful wordsmith, it didn't matter to me. Elemental continued with the poptastic sounds of previous albums and contained the minor hit Break It Down Again, yet another smashing tune with a riveting beat and striking vocal delivery. Alternately, check out the acoustic version - pure bliss. By 1996, 99% of 80's bands had disappeared (except U2) and Raoul and the Kings of Spain caused barely a ripple. However, this album is sumptuous, rich, divine. It's full of hopes and regrets, of broken dreams and fractured heart and swirling tunes and driving thumps. It's an album of contrasts. Sorry is a slap in the face; I Choose You a sweet confection.

Things went quiet then. Roland was happy to be his own person. He doesn't have email, a website, myspace, twitter, facebook. He doesn't believe in any of the cult of personality around pop stars, or former pop stars. Doesn't want to live in the past. Then in 2004 word came out that Kurt Smith and Roland had buried the hatchet and settled their differences. With the oh so ironic title Everybody Loves A Happy Ending, Tears For Fears took every great element of their back catalogue and fused it in to something fresh, new, exciting and rewarding. Noting it was a sort of 'thank you' to the fans, an album of redemption and rediscovery, Everybody Loves A Happy Ending was criminally over-looked in Australia and a minor hit in Europe and the US where it was labelled an 80's comeback. For me, Call Me Mellow is one of the GREATEST songs of the Noughties and should be compulsorily downloaded to every single I-pod in the world. It's harmony and sugary pop is just brilliant. I'm gushing and it's just one of the songs I can sing word for word and puts a smile on my face.

Even though I missed them on the Spandau Ballet reunion tour, they still perform on and off. Fact checking on Wikipedia tonight, apparently Orzabel and Smith are back writing for a new album. This news alone excites me no end.

So now, to escape the hurly-burly, I can hide in my bedroom with my I-pod on, playing Angry Birds or reading a book, and smile to my heart's content as the same band that I discovered almost 30 years ago can so thoroughly entertain me still today. Tears For Fears back catalogue is like a box of magic...do yourself a favour and check it out.