Tears for Fears | Songs from the Big Chair

On February 25th, 1985, Tears for Fears released their second studio album Songs from the Big Chair. a record that of its 8 tracks contained 5 hit singles including “Mothers Talk“, “Shout“, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World“, “Head over Heels“, and “I Believe“.

Songs from the Big Chair is Tears for Fears most well-known and best-selling album to date having gone multi-platinum worldwide.

The song “Shout” was written in 1984 as a Cold War era protest song encouraging people to question authority, the status quo, and the “black and white” narratives society as a whole tends to accept in lieu or more complicated truths.

The Cold War era themes, along with political corruption, greed, and environmentalism, were further explored in the next single from the album “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”.

Along with “Mad World” from the band’s previous album The Hurting, the song “Head Over Heels” was prominently featured in the 2001 film Donnie Darko.

On the album’s title Songs from the Big Chair, Curt Smith told Melody Maker in March of 1985:

“The title was my idea. It’s a bit perverse but then you’ve got to understand our sense of humour. The ‘Big Chair’ idea is from this brilliant film called Sybil about a girl with 16 different personalities. She’d been tortured incredibly by her mother as a child and the only place she felt safe, the only time she could really be herself was when she was sitting in her analyst’s chair. She felt safe, comfortable and wasn’t using her different faces as a defence. It’s kind of an ‘up yours’ to the English music press who really fucked us up for a while. This is us now – and they can’t get at us anymore.”

Watch all the videos from the album below: