walking upstream…
Tears for Fears
photo: raph_ph · cc by 2.0 ↗Tears for Fears
Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith formed Tears for Fears in Bath in 1981, taking their name from a phrase in Arthur Janov's primal-therapy writing and building The Hurting around confessional, therapy-inflected lyrics wrapped in gleaming synth-pop production. By 1985's Songs from the Big Chair they had traded austerity for rhythm and Fairlight orchestration, turning "Shout" and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" into some of the decade's most inescapable singles without losing the anxious, searching undertow of their debut. Across four decades and several long hiatuses, the pair have kept returning to the same tension: widescreen pop hooks built over lyrics about breakdown, control, and repair.
the sound in question
1985
Everybody Wants to Rule the WorldTears for Fears
walk the tributaries ↓
Talking Heads1980s · New wave / Art punk / Post-punk
Orzabal has said he built the rhythm for "Shout" by feeding a LinnDrum machine the groove from Talking Heads' "Listening Wind," then playing Prophet-5 chords over the top in a big echoey room until the song "popped in from the ether" — a production method (raid a favorite record's rhythm track, build something new on top of it) the band leaned on across Songs from the Big Chair.
listen: upstream & here
1980
Listening WindTalking Heads
1984
ShoutTears for Fears
listen forListen to the tense, one-note-vamp pulse under "Listening Wind," all clipped guitar and polyrhythmic drums, then drop the needle on "Shout" — the tom-heavy, hypnotic groove under the chorus is descended almost directly from it, even as the song around it becomes a widescreen power ballad.
Simple Minds1980s · Post-punk / New wave / Art rock / Synth-pop
The same drum-machine-collage method produced the band's biggest hit: Orzabal has said "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" grew out of programming a LinnDrum with the rhythms of Simple Minds' "Waterfront" and Linx's "Throw Away the Key," then building a song over that skeleton — evidence Tears for Fears were listening as closely to their British new wave peers' rhythm sections as to any American art-rock touchstone.
listen: upstream & here
1983
WaterfrontSimple Minds
1985
Everybody Wants to Rule the WorldTears for Fears
listen forCue up the tom-driven, marching stomp that opens "Waterfront" and compare it to the loping, four-on-the-floor bounce that carries "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" — different songs entirely, but you can hear the same insistent, parade-ground drum pattern underneath both.
Robert Wyatt1970s · Art rock / Canterbury scene / Progressive pop
Orzabal wrote "I Believe" in the style of, and dedicated to, Robert Wyatt — the liner notes read "(if he's listening)," a nod to Wyatt's own "Dedicated to You but You Weren't Listening," and the single's B-side was a cover of Wyatt's "Sea Song." Orzabal reportedly offered Wyatt the song before deciding to record it himself, making it the clearest example on Songs from the Big Chair of the album's quieter, more vulnerable register.
listen: upstream & here
1974
Sea SongRobert Wyatt
1985
I BelieveTears for Fears
listen forPlay the drifting, harmonically unstable piano and murmured vocal of Wyatt's "Sea Song," then "I Believe" — both let a plainspoken vocal wander over chords that never quite resolve where you expect, trading pop structure for something closer to a late-night confession.