Funny how time flies – “Songs From the Big Chair” by Tears For Fears turns 40

“Funny how…… time flies!” – the final lyric/ line of the Tears for Fears hit single “Head Over Heels” could not hit any harder than it does today on the 40th anniversary of their sophomore global hit album “Songs from the Big Chair” – the duo’s (featuring Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith) ticket to global ubiquity, stardom, and quite possibly financial assets that set them up for a comfortable retirement. The duo, now in their 60s, are enjoying a renaissance with their first US Top 10 album (i.e. “The Tipping Point” released in March 2022) in 30 years, performing at iconic venues for the first time (they played at Madison Square Garden in New York City for the first time in June 2023), and a recognition that their music has not only stood the test of time, but has also transcended generational boundaries. This is a reality that Orzabal and Smith attribute to a prevalent syndrome of “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. The band’s prior full-length album, “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending”, was released in 2004. In this article, I would like to leverage the merit and enduring power of “Songs from the big chair” as a framework to shine a spotlight on broader trends in the music industry and music consumption.

On-demand streaming platforms such as Spotify have amplified a myth of short attention spans of younger music listeners.

The newspaper The Economist has published a fascinating review of a new book titled “Mood Machine” by journalist Liz Pelly. The book’s focus is on Spotify and its impact both on music consumption as well as on music creation. The impact on incentives for musicians is particularly striking. The book review indicates that:

The 30-second threshold to trigger royalty payments encouraged “streambait” – music with early hooks designed to stop listeners skipping.

What the above phenomenon has done is force artists/bands to jettison intros or instrumental solos. This economic reality (i.e. on-demand streaming now accounts for 84% of global recorded music revenue) has also compelled artists to make songs a lot shorter. In his video series of “What makes this song great” (in the episode dedicated to the Tears For Fears signature hit single “Everybody wants to rule the world”, youtuber and music producer Rick Beato indicates that instruments “do not have the room to breathe” in modern pop songs in the way that they did on the songs from “Songs from the big chair”. The cinematic introduction with the goose-bump inducing saxophone melody on “The Working Hour” (track #2 on this album) would be a candidate for the chopping block (artistically speaking) in this limited audio space if it was recorded today. The instrumental bridge of the hit single “Shout” which featured an organ followed by a euphoric synth-flute section elicited unbridled excitement when performed in June 2023 at Madison Square Garden to an audience that spanned generations. Can anyone imagine a version of “Shout” that does NOT have this section? The length of songs was an issue in yesteryear too since radio would not play long songs. In fact, the lyric “so glad we’ve almost made it, so sad we had to fade it” on “Everybody wants to rule the world” was a thinly veiled protest by Tears For Fears for being forced by their A&R manager David Bates to shorten the length of their single “Shout” by “fading out” the track. But we could argue that pressure to shorten songs even further (because of on-demand streaming economics) while getting to the song’s defining hook faster has squeezed modern musicians’ ability to innovate in a pop song. In fact, the final line of the Economist review of Liz Pelly’s book “Mood Machine” indicates that “Not all have been hoodwinked by Spotify. It may be tough on musicians; it may not be great for musical innovation. But listeners are voting with their ears”. If this is how listeners are voting, on-demand streaming, with its payout structure, is unlikely to support the type of songs (which benefited from both lower song length constraints AND the lack of pressure to front-load a song with a hook) that featured on “Songs from the big chair” both now and in the future – and that would be a loss to music listeners that they are blissfully ignorant of today. More importantly, it is a combination of the song skippability and payout structure of on-demand streaming that is stifling musical innovation and NOT Gen Z’s limited attention spans. They have a larger attention span than we give them credit for.

The oxymoron of being derivative while being original is a real possibility – but one that is rarely celebrated in modern music.

One of the more prevalent approaches to being derivative involves sampling. Controversial and legally beleaguered rapper and media mogul Diddy (formerly known as Puff Daddy and then P Diddy) seems to be the one of the most noteworthy proponents (or abusers – depending on your perspective) of this approach. One of his biggest hit singles in the 90s, a song called “I’ll be missing you”, heavily samples “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. In an episode of VH1’s “I love the 90s”, one of the guests took a dig at Diddy saying that he basically got rid of the melody of “Every Breath You take” and replaced it with “ummm…yeah…ummm yeah” – a not-so-subtle dig at lightweight lyrics over a melodic hook that has stood the test of time. It also questions the element of originality in the song. There are other ways to be subtly derivative while being original. In fact, for “Everybody wants to rule the word”, Roland Orzabal admitted rather openly, that he programmed the drums for the song to mirror the rhythm section of “Waterfront” by Simple Minds. The song’s title was initially meant to be “Everybody wants to go to war”. This was changed after the band took a line directly from the lyric of a song called “Charlie Don’t Surf” from the “Sandinista!” album by The Clash. For “Shout”, Tears for Fears mimicked the rhythm section of a song from the “Remain in Light” album by The Talking Heads. It is safe to say that even with these imitations, they managed to create something truly original and distinct and are unlikely to receive the stinging criticism that someone like Diddy occasionally found himself at the receiving end of for his excessive sampling of 80s classics.

In fact, there is an entire movie, with a narrative dedicated to this approach of borrowing rhythm sections to create new music. The movie is called “Sing Street” (directed by John Carney). It is the third in a trilogy of movies (the other two being “Once” and “Begin Again” – both of which have also been directed by John Carney) that focuses on music being an avenue to a catharsis from some type of emotionally crippling life struggle. Noteworthy examples of songs on the movie’s fantastic soundtrack (largely penned by hit songwriter and former Danny Wilson frontman Gary Clark) include “A Beautiful Sea” (derives inspiration from “In Between Days” by The Cure) and “Drive it like you stole it” (derives inspiration from “Maneater” by Hall & Oates). Sadly, this movie went relatively under the radar and its brilliant soundtrack did NOT get the promotion it deserved (of course, we regularly play around 3-4 tracks off this album on our 24/7 global online radio broadcast which you can tune in to HERE). One example of an approach that momentarily uses a musical sample from yesteryear is that of the hit single “Secrets” by The Weeknd. The song uses the chorus ending of “Pale Shelter” (from Tears for Fears’ debut album “The Hurting”) as the ending of its chorus and it works incredibly well (Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith ended up getting songwriting credit on this song for the use of this sample). No one would criticize The Weeknd for a lazy rehash for this song. Once again, it is rare that we see subtle borrowing of music from yesteryear being celebrated in the way that it should be – or in the way that Tears For Fears applied this approach to some of the songs on this landmark album.

Sophomore slumps can be career-ending, but sophomore bumps can send a band stratospheric:

A stellar debut from a music act can be both a gift and a curse. I’m starting to lean towards it being more of the latter. Bands have the luxury of time to work on their debut album, but in the event that it is hugely successful, there is immense pressure for a quick follow-up that replicates or dwarfs the success of its sonic predecessor.

It is a tall order that revolves around the questionable assumption that unbridled creativity can manifest on a schedule dictated by a corporate overlord – usually the record label. The most noteworthy examples of acts that are emblematic of this phenomenon are Duran Duran with their second album “Rio”, Wham! with their album “Make It Big”, and Take That with their album “Everything Changes”. With the exception of Take That, for the other two acts, their sophomore albums were pivotal to breaking America. This matters since the US continues to be the single largest market for recorded music. For Duran Duran, in addition to having earworms such as “Hungry Like the Wolf” and the album’s title track “Rio”, they were pioneers of the location shoot for music videos (their music videos for the hit singles “Hungry like the wolf” and “Save A Prayer” were shot in Sri Lanka). This was a novelty in the early years of MTV and it made them visual mainstays of 80s pop culture in addition to them being considered credible musicians. For Wham, their success with “Make It Big” (also an 8-track album just like “Songs from the Big Chair” is), stemmed almost exclusively from the quantum leap in songwriting output of the musical mastermind George Michael, who by this time had grown confident enough to hold the production reins of the music too. For Tears for Fears, their sophomore success stems from a bold sonic reinvention buttressed by unshackled experimentation and ambition. In the documentary “Scenes from the big chair”, singer Roland Orzabal indicated that their creative modus operandi involved “fitting songs into interesting sounds”. To this end, according to the album’s producer Chris Hughes, their arsenal of recording equipment included “a LinnDrum II box, a Drumulator drum box, a Roland Super Jupiter Synthesizer, a Fairlight synthesizer, a DX7 keyboard, a rack of guitars, a Steinberger Bass, a Fender Stratocaster and a Gretsch maple drum kit”. Unlike many of their peers, they unambiguously shed the synth-pop label associated with their debut album “The Hurting” rather quickly, and morphed into a true pop-rock act whose defining musical attributes were stylistic fluidity, the technical acumen of skilled recording studio wizards, and an unwavering commitment to the elevation of symbolism. Their sophomore success was not preordained by any stretch. They had two false starts in the form of the non-album single “The Way You are” and the relatively low-charting (in the UK) “Mother’s Talk” (the album’s lead single in the UK). Despite this setback, their record label greenlit the album based on the strength of the songs “The Working Hour” and the melodically infectious hit single “Head Over Heels”. They turned the ship around with the ultimate sonic protest against blind acceptance – “Shout” (which became a US #1 single). It also helped that they had two more hit singles – one of them being their indisputable signature single “Everybody wants to rule the world” (oddly enough, it’s also their back-catalog’s stylistic outlier).

American terrestrial radio of yesteryear and on-demand streaming are homogenizing musical tastes en masse.

“Songs from the big chair” is virtually impossible to categorize into a traditional musical genre. In the previous section, I referred to it as being a pop/rock album, but in doing so, I find myself battling a nagging feeling that my label does not do justice to the sonic versatility of this album. Pitchfork magazine indicates that “they wrote cresting choruses, arena-ready anthems, elegant ballads, and multi-section songs that have more in common with prog-rock than most of new wave”.  Between the soulful and sparse jazziness of “I Believe”, the synth-heavy “Head Over Heels”, the shuffle drum pattern on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, and the progressive art rock of “Listen”, “Songs in the Big Chair” is a masterpiece in genre-hopping, which explains the broad spectrum of listeners that the album resonated with across cultural contexts. This is the absolute antithesis to a world in which we are conditioned to believe that our musical tastes are far narrower and more homogenous than they actually are. In the pre-internet era, this trend was bolstered by terrestrial radio in America (with its excessive focus on genre-centric radio) and in the on-demand streaming world, where algorithmic curation is king, the idea is to assemble songs in a playlist based on their similarity. In the pre-internet world, MTV, with its cross-genre format served as a potent counterweight to the homogenization of tastes that terrestrial radio in the US was becoming a catalyst for. Sadly, its demise as a 24-hour music video channel strengthened conglomerate-owned terrestrial radio’s (which by the mid-90s had stripped DJs of their curatorial autonomy) stranglehold on mass opinion shaping as it applies to pop/rock music. As for on-demand streaming, while there is nothing inherently wrong with this being ONE modality of music discovery, it is increasingly becoming the reigning norm for music discovery. “Songs from the big chair” should serve as a reminder of the inadequacies of this approach to music discovery in isolation. Hopefully the 40^th anniversary for this album is a wake-up call for pop music aficionados that shines a spotlight on the wide sonic palette that a broader pop music spectrum (NOT facilitated by algorithmic curation) creates room for – both for artists/bands and for music listeners.

40 years is undoubtedly a chronological milestone of consequence for this landmark album. “Songs from the big chair” is a timeless classic and it is likely to survive another 40 more years in the public consciousness with relative ease if the last four decades are any indication of its future prospects. I congratulate the extended team of Roland Orzabal, Curt Smith, Ian Stanley, Manny Elias, and Chris Hughes for creating something whose sonic luster time simply cannot erode. What memories or observation does this album evoke for you? Please feel free to share with us in the comments section below!