FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Tears for Fears – Songs from the Big Chair
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ON 25th February…
Tears for Fears’ second studio album, Songs from the Big Chair, turns thirty-five! It is an album that played a role in my very early life and, whilst it is not as celebrated as their debut, The Hurting (1983), it is a magnificent album. Tears for Fears formed in Bath in 1981 by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith- Manny Elias and Ian Stanley are former members. Songs from the Big Chair is looser and more experimental than their debut – as many critics have remarked – and some felt that the band lacked real depth on the album. Regardless of some doubts and ho-hum reviews, the album reached number-two in the U.K. and peaked at number-one in the U.S. and Canada. If The Hurting boasted classics like Mad World, Songs from the Big Chair had more than its share of big tracks: Mother’s Talk, Shout, Head Over Heels, and the monster that is Everybody Wants to Rule the World among them. The album’s title derived from a 1976 television film, Sybil, which concerned a woman with multiple personality disorder; she feels safe sitting in ‘The Big Chair’. Even though I was too young to realise the messages and meanings behind songs like Everybody Wants to Rule the World, I was hooked and seduced by the incredible production (by Chris Hughes), and the catchiness of the songs. I am baffled why some critics felt (and still do) the album is not that deep and serious.
If you did not see the Classic Albums documentary about Songs from the Big Chair, you must see it, as it was illuminating and full of great insights. Although many songs on the album have a Pop sheen, the lyrics are pretty effecting. Shout is about the aftermath of The Cold War and an encouragement to protest; Everybody Wants to Rule the World is about desire humans have for control and power – not many Pop contemporaries were writing songs as political and serious. Regardless, I think Songs from the Big Chair is a perfect blend of observational and socially-aware lyrics and accessible compositions. Make sure you buy Songs from the Big Chair on vinyl and experience an album that is almost thirty-five years old. I think many of the songs seem more relevant now than they did in 1985, what with the rising awareness of climate change and politicians’ ignorance and zeal for power. I think there has been more love and respect for Songs from the Big Chair in the years since its release, as opposed to its 1985 launch. It is a terrific album that deserves a lot of attention as it approaches its anniversary. Here is what AllMusic wrote in their review:
“If The Hurting was mental anguish, Songs from the Big Chair marks the progression towards emotional healing, a particularly bold sort of catharsis culled from Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith's shared attraction to primal scream therapy. The album also heralded a dramatic maturation in the band's music, away from the synth-pop brand with which it was (unjustly) seared following the debut, and towards a complex, enveloping pop sophistication. The songwriting of Orzabal, Smith, and keyboardist Ian Stanley took a huge leap forward, drawing on reserves of palpable emotion and lovely, protracted melodies that draw just as much on soul and R&B music as they do on immediate pop hooks.
The album could almost be called pseudo-conceptual, as each song holds its place and each is integral to the overall tapestry, a single-minded resolve that is easy to overlook when an album is as commercially successful as Songs from the Big Chair. And commercially successful it was, containing no less than three huge commercial radio hits, including the dramatic and insistent march, "Shout" and the shimmering, cascading "Head Over Heels," which, tellingly, is actually part of a song suite on the album. Orzabal and Smith's penchant for theorizing with steely-eyed austerity was mistaken for harsh bombasticism in some quarters, but separated from its era, the album only seems earnestly passionate and immediate, and each song has the same driven intent and the same glistening remoteness. It is not only a commercial triumph, it is an artistic tour de force. And in the loping, percolating "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," Tears for Fears perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the mid-'80s while impossibly managing to also create a dreamy, timeless pop classic. Songs from the Big Chair is one of the finest statements of the decade”.
I think the passing of time has revealed the album in a new light and, as I said, Songs from the Big Chair seems more relevant now than ever. When they tackled the album in 2017, here is what Pitchfork said:
“Tears for Fears synthesize all of the threads on Songs From the Big Chair—intricacy, romance, psychology, and politics—on the album’s centerpiece, the everlasting “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” Hughes says that he, Orzabal, and Stanley put the song together in a week, astonishing because the track has so many components: the twinkling synth at the beginning joined by a spider-like guitar, the snappy instrumental lead-up to the opening verse, the shuffling drum beat, the chorus, the galvanizing bridge, a moody instrumental passage, a guitar solo, a new melody for a verse afterwards, another guitar solo. And the genius of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is how it escalates, how each part increasingly amplifies the passion of the music.
More than any other Tears for Fears track, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” most successfully transposes Janov’s psychological texts into a pop song with global resonance. Though “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is obviously a meditation on power, you could project virtually every major issue of the 1980s onto the lyrics: the environment (“Turn your back on mother nature”), the fleeting nature of financial success (“Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure/Nothing ever lasts forever”), authoritarian rule (“Even while we sleep/We will find you”), and the Cold War (“Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down”).
“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is a song with a near-universal appeal, and likewise Songs From the Big Chair seemed to resonate with everyone—jocks, goths, pre-teens, adults. “At our gigs, you’ll get young girls at the front, the Joy Division fans at the back and even some hippies putting in an appearance,” Smith told Hall. “Our fan mail is certainly very varied, containing letters from everyone from twelve-year-old girls to mothers with five-year-old daughters”.
Make sure you buy the album if you have not heard it or, if you cannot afford it, go and stream it instead. It is a remarkable record that has so many huge numbers. I am not sure whether Tears for Fears are still touring, but one looks back at albums like the genius Songs from the Big Chair and listens in amazement! Its brilliance, legacy, and power still moves me…
TO this day.