Eighties music is largely crap despite its zany persistence, but one band central to the era stood far above the rest

Conceding that everyone wants to rule a mad, mad world and shouting about it sows the seeds for meaningful, head-over-heels songwriting

Every now and then, a modern motion picture includes a scene accompanied by a piece of music so perfectly tailored to the onscreen action and mood that you’re briefly convinced the song was written solely for the film, even when you know better. For example, Gen Xers are familiar with the shallow but effective use of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” in the 1989 romantic comedy Say Anything, when the song—maybe Gabriel’s second- or third-best popular single—was only three years old.

The 2001 film Donnie Darko was, and is, not for everyone, although it should be. While multi-layered psychological cinematic thrillers are de rigueur today—or were for a while, before comic-book dramas became the foundation for every other movie produced—this was not the case at the dawn of the century. It’s not the kind of picture a viewer can appreciate while engaging apps on a cell phone. Set in 1988, it invokes the common story arc of an outcast kid leveraging a quirk of fate to triumph over his social and other adversities, but gives it an emotionally wrenching but palatable twist at the end, which is set to a song performed by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews titled Mad World.

The version of this song was in fact created specifically for use for use in Donnie Darko, which would not have been remotely the same without it. But this was merely one of many covers of a 1982 song written by Roland Orzabal and sung by Curt Smith. The two Englishmen formed the core of the band Tears for Fears, which in one sense was the quintessential 1980s band, releasing all three of its signature albums during the decade, but in a different sense stood far apart from its peers in the depth and quality of both its melodic arrangements and its songwriting.

Mad World didn’t reach the top forty in the United States, so I did not learn about Tears for Fears until the spring of 1985, when I was in ninth grade and close to completing a now-dead rite of passage: junior high school. This was a good spring for me; through track, I was discovering that I could be both passionate about and decent at something other than math tests and spelling bees, and, also through track, I received my first official kiss from a girl.

That kiss happened on a living-room couch while a song called “Voices Carry” by ‘Til Tuesday was playing in the background. But at exactly the same time, a song called “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” from the album Songs From the Big Chair was getting even more airplay. This was Tears for Fears’ first U.S. hit, and it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts here in June. Written in the key of D major, it’s one of the few songs by Tears for Fears that conforms to a standard key signature with no oddball chords.

Interestingly, the original name of the song was Everybody Wants to Go to War. If you comb through the deeper history of Tears for Fears and in particular Orzabal, you discover that the band’s music was essentially an open, exploratory therapy session.

That tune was just an appetizer for what was to come. That summer, another track from Songs From the Big Chair reached #1 in the U.S. The first or second time I heard “Shout,” I thought something like “This song is just going to be on the radio continuously for a long time.” More or less true. This is an incredibly basic and beat-driven song with a synth roll that sounds like a pan flute. It’s written in G minor, giving it excellent 1980s company (see also: “Money for Nothing,” “Tainted Love,” and—sort of—“Leave It”).

Because the percussion in “Shout,” is critical, it lends itself to creative live performances. Have some sturdy glass bottles lying around?

Later that year, “Head Over Heels,” a pure love song, reached #3 on the U.S. charts. This one is in the key of C Lydian, a concept I only learned about after the dual blessings of “the pandemic” and sham social-justice efforts got underway, eliminating most of my income stream and giving me more time to both complain and play around with my keyboards (and expand my collection of same. One of my friends, who was born in 1985, had this song played at her wedding. I can’t think of a more brilliant choice.

Thanks to Songs From the Big Chair, Tears for Fears wound up having a 1985 much like Henry Rono’s 1978. But it was the band’s 1989 release of The Seeds of Love that would secure its current placement as the top band of the Eighties. Like most of the band’s singles, the signature track and my favorite Tears for Fears song, “Sowing the Seeds of Love,” was in theory too long (six minutes and 19 seconds) for radio airplay. It was played in its entirety on the radio anyway, enough times to reach #2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

“Sowing the Seeds of Love” is in either G minor or B-flat major, but its key signature is elusive because of the number of side trips the song takes. I realize virtually no readers care about these kinds of details, including those who agree to wade through my posts about music in the first place. But I think it’s clear to everyone that these posts serve as anchors to a version of sanity and stability, as I can always retreat into music—playing songs I’m already good at playing, learning new ones, sometimes even making up mini-melodies of my own—when the realities of the external world and my noisome perceptions of same are too much to behold or even process through malign jocularity and unfettered spite.

Tears for Fears broke up in the early 1990s, meaning that Orzabal and Smith stopped getting along. But they later reunited and last year Tears for Fears released its seventh studio “album.” As the above videos suggest, the pair and its on-stage supporting cast have performed regularly in the years since the zenith of Tears for Fears over thirty-five years ago. Smith has made a number of television cameos, and was regularly written into episodes of the USA Network comedy-drama Pysch so that the regulars in the series could abuse his character, who was one Curt Smith of the band Tears for Fears.

Tears for Fears recently performed at the Ball Arena in Denver. I considered going, but couldn’t get any of the few people I floated the idea past to get excited about it. Instead, I spent some time reflecting on what the band’s music has done for my mind and spirits over the course of several decades and on the penetrating imperatives in Orzabal’s lyrics, which include:

High time we made a stand
Time to eat all your words
And shook up the views of the common man
Swallow your pride
And the love train rides from coast to coast
Open your eyes