Music / Songs from the Big Chair

There's a room where the light won't find you
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down

In violent times
You shouldn't have to sell your soul
In black and white
They really, really ought to know

Those one-track minds
That took you for a working boy
Kiss them goodbye
You shouldn't have to jump for joy
You shouldn't have to jump for joy

— "Shout"

Songs from the Big Chair is the second studio album by English pop group Tears for Fears. It was released through Mercury Records on February 25, 1985.

A significant departure from the angsty Synth-Pop of The Hurting, the band's sophomore release sees them incorporate a much broader and more eclectic range of influences, ranging from jazz to Post-Punk and Progressive Rock to World Music, in doing so crafting an elaborate progressive pop sound that would define their later output. The decision to do this was motivated by the band's own Creator Backlash against their non-album single "The Way You Are", which had been rushed out to appease demand from Mercury Records; frontman Roland Orzabal described it in hindsight as "the point we realized we had to change direction," and change direction they did.

Matching the change in sound, the lyrical and emotional content on the album become far more open in tone. Co-vocalist and bassist Curt Smith attributed this to a desire to move away from The Hurting's insular, introverted tone, and this in combination with the new musical style result in a much broader range of moods and topics being covered on this album. Whereas The Hurting was a Concept Album about the band's own troubled childhoods, Songs from the Big Chair presents a mix of navel-gazing, love songs, and musings on the Cold War.

Upon release, the album was a massive commercial success, topping the charts in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany, as well as peaking at No. 2 in the UK. It would go on to become the fifth-best-selling album of the year in Britain and the tenth-best-selling of the year in America, later being certified septuple-platinum in Canada, quintuple-platinum in the US, triple-platinum in the UK, platinum in Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, and gold in Germany. Furthermore, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" would act as the band's American Breakthrough Hit, catapulting them into mainstream prominence there. To this day, Songs from the Big Chair remains Tears for Fears' most successful album.

The band would disappear from the mainstream eye for three years after the conclusion of the album's supporting world tour in February 1986. Throughout that time, the band would devote themselves to working on their third album, 1989's The Seeds of Love.

Songs from the Big Chair was supported by six singles: "Mothers Talk", "Shout", "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", "Head over Heels", "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)" and "Mothers Talk (US Remix)".

Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Shout" (6:32)
2. "The Working Hour" (6:30)
3. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (4:10)
4. "Mothers Talk" (5:09)

Side Two

1. "I Believe" (4:53)
2. "Broken" (2:38)
3. "Head over Heels/Broken (Live)" (5:01)
4. "Listen" (6:48)

It's hard to be a man when there's a trope in your hand:

• '80s Hair: The band's mullets are displayed prominently on the album cover. Even if you didn't know anything else about the duo, their hairstyles leave absolutely no doubt that the picture was taken in the '80s.
• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Due to the rhythm of the song requiring it, the chorus "Cumpleaños chica, no hay que preocuparse" in "Listen" is uttered as "CUMpleaños chica, no hay que preoCUparse" rather than "cumpleAños chica, no hay que preocuPARse". ^note In Spanish, words that end with an "n," an "s," or a vowel accentuate the penultimate syllable unless otherwise specified by an accent mark.
• All Love Is Unrequited: "When in Love with a Blind Man" (the B-Side of "Head over Heels") is about being in love with a man who's oblivious to your romantic feelings.
• Alternate Music Video: "Mothers Talk" received three different videos over the years:
  • The first video features performance footage of the band interspersed with scenes of a little girl being studied in a laboratory. The band quickly disowned it and it didn't get much airplay as a result.
  • After the first video was shuttered, the band shot a second one at the last minute mostly consisting of Orzabal and Smith miming to the song in Smith's backyard and other outdoor locations, interspersed with news and sports footage and shots of Orzabal in a tent made of newspapers. A behind-the-scenes photo of the latter is featured in the album's liner notes.
  • The third and final video was shot for the 1986 re-recording of the song, featuring a 1950s family attempting to shelter themselves from an impending nuclear strike, interspersed with performance footage of the band.
• "Anger Is Healthy" Aesop: "Shout" is about how healthy it is to verbally lash out against injustices from a higher power.
• Arc Words: The verses "In my mind's eye / One little boy, one little man / Funny how time flies" links together "Broken" and "Head over Heels", closing out both tracks, and in the latter's case, segueing into the live reprise of "Broken".
• "Bang!" Flag Gun: In the "Head over Heels" music video, Orzabal's character has a toy gun which shoots out the message "Bang?" to his Love Interest.
• Big Brother Is Watching: "Everybody Wants to Rule the World":
  Even while we sleep
  We will find you
  Acting on your best behaviour
• Bookends:
  • "Head over Heels" is sandwiched between two different renditions of "Broken".
  • The album as a whole opens and closes with soundscape-style pieces that go over six minutes in length with one-word, commanding titles.
• Boyish Short Hair: In the "Head over Heels" music video, the Hot Librarian has short hair, which underlines her demure, bookish personality.
• Broken Record: Most of the lyrics to "Listen" are repetitions of the chorus "Cumpleaños chica, no hay que preocuparse."
• Call-Back: "I Believe" opens with the verse "I believe that when the hurting and the pain has gone", namedropping the band's previous album in the process.
• Camera Abuse: In the Scenes from the Big Chair documentary (which was included on the 2014 super deluxe box set), Smith accidentally hits the camera next to him during the "Broken" reprise, so the footage is briefly shaky as a result.
• Cool Car: In the "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" music video, Smith drives an antique mid-1960s Austin-Healey 3000 Mark III convertible sports car that was painted in British Racing Green.
• Cool Shades: Curt Smith sports a pair of distinctive round sunglasses in the "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" music video; these same specs appear in various promotional photos from the era.
• Deliberately Monochrome:
  • The cover photo of the album is in black and white, contrasting the full-color photos in the liner notes.
  • Most of the 1986 "Mothers Talk" music video is filmed in sepia, apart from the performance footage of the band, tying in with the 1950s visuals.
• Demoted to Extra: In the "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)" music video, Curt Smith only appears thrice for a few seconds; he hits a triangle the first two times, and in the third, he's dressed to the nines in a tuxedo while he taps his champagne glass with a knife. It's an early sign that he's gradually being pushed aside by Roland Orzabal from the band's creative process.
• Digital Destruction: The original LP release erroneously swaps the stereo channels around. This error is not present on the concurrent CD or cassette releases, but it is carried over to the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab remaster.
• Distant Finale: The epilogue of the "Head over Heels" music video jumps ahead a few decades to show Orzabal's character and his Love Interest as an old married couple.
• Double Entendre: Orzabal's "Bang!" Flag Gun in the "Head over Heels" music video instead reads "Bang?", playing off the word's alternate sexual connotation.
• Downer Ending: The 1986 "Mothers Talk" music video ends with the picture freeze-framing on the family and turning into a black-and-white negative, implying that they died in a nuclear strike.
• Epic Rocking: "Shout", "The Working Hour", and "Listen" all go over the six-minute mark. Additionally, the "Broken"/"Head over Heels/Broken (Live)" suite clocks in at a total of 8:02 when viewed as a single piece.
• Face on the Cover: A monochrome headshot of vocalists Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith appears on the front cover.
• Fade to White: This occurs at the end of the 1986 "Mothers Talk" music video to denote that the family has perished in a nuclear blast.
• Fading into the Next Song: All four tracks on side two segue seamlessly into one another.
• Four-Leaf Clover: This is the motif of "Head over Heels"; the verse "This is my four-leaf clover" is sung twice, numerous animated four-leaf clovers briefly swirl around the screen in the music video, and the Picture◊ Disc◊ edition is shaped like a four-leaf clover.
• Freeze-Frame Ending:
  • The first "Mothers Talk" music video comes to a close with a freeze-frame of Roland Orzabal playing his guitar.
  • Used to imply the family's death at the end of the 1986 "Mothers Talk" music video.
• Gratuitous Spanish: "Listen" prominently features repetitions of the chorus "Cumpleaños chica, no hay que preocuparse", which is Spanish for "Birthday girl, no need to worry."
• Guyliner: Orzabal wears eyeliner in the concert footage of the Scenes from the Big Chair documentary.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Roland Orzabal wrote the lyrics for "When in Love with a Blind Man" (which is about unrequited love for a man who's oblivious to one's romantic feelings), and Curt Smith is the lead vocalist on the song, so this strongly implies that the character who's pining for a (presumably straight) guy he can't have is male, and thus he would be gay or bisexual. ^note It should be noted that Orzabal and Smith used to enjoy hanging out at a gay vegetarian discotheque during their youth even though they're neither gay, vegetarian, nor disco fans, but as sensitive men who loathed the toxic masculinity environment that they grew up in, they appreciated the safe space that this discotheque provided, so they're comfortable around gay people.
• Indecipherable Lyrics: Most listeners have trouble discerning the backing vocals on "Head over Heels" at the 2:04 mark, so Curt Smith clarified in a tweet that the verses are:
  Nothing ever changes when you're acting your age
  Nothing gets done when you feel like a baby
  Nothing ever changes when you're acting your age
• Instrumentals: "Broken (Live)", contrasting the vocally-driven "Broken".
• Interspecies Friendship: In the "Head over Heels" music video, Curt Smith's character is friends with the chimpanzee, as they share a high-five and engage in Platonic Kissing. The behind-the-scenes footage on the Scenes from the Big Chair documentary also shows clips of Smith monkeying around (pun intended) with the chimp in between takes.
• In the Style of:
  • According to Roland Orzabal, "Mothers Talk" was envisioned as a Talking Heads pastiche.
  • "I Believe" acts as a homage to the style of Robert Wyatt, to whom the song was originally offered. The album's liner notes further lampshaded it by stating "Dedicated to Robert Wyatt (if he's listening)", referencing the song "Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening" by Soft Machine, which Wyatt was previously a member of.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side:
  • In "Head over Heels", the verse "It's hard to be a man when there's a gun in your hand" criticizes the idea that a man must engage in violence in order to prove his masculinity.
  • At the beginning of the "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" music video, a kid in a cowboy costume (cowboys are an icon of American machismo) points his toy pistols at Curt Smith — a Long-Haired Pretty Boy dressed in pink — who simply ignores the child's "tough guy" posturing as he drives away. This mirrors the group's disdain for toxic masculinity, subtly blaming America's aggressive "cowboy culture" for its role in the Cold War (which is the subject of the song).
• Job Song: As Curt Smith explains in this interview,◊ "The Working Hour" is about the stress of meeting the demands and deadlines of the band's pushy record company. He and Roland Orzabal resented being bossed around in this fashion because the final product ended up being a failure in the duo's eyes.
  Smith: "The Working Hour" was written at the time of "The Way You Are" because of all the work, the pressure of work. It was getting like a job all of a sudden. One line is "We are paid by those who learn by our mistakes", and that's about being used as guinea pigs, basically: "Get another record out, your career's going down the drain!" So you put out a record that's a flop...
• Lighter and Softer: Songs from the Big Chair is far less angsty than The Hurting, both musically and lyrically, trading out the oppressively bleak Dark Wave ruminations on Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith's troubled childhoods in favor of more vibrant progressive pop about an equally eclectic variety of subjects.
• Limited Lyrics Song: For all of its nearly seven-minute runtime, "Listen" has only two proper stanzas, both of which are only two lines long. The other lyrics are mostly just repeating "Cumpleaños chica, no hay que preocuparse" and a brief mutter of the Title Drop, with the vast majority of the song being a pseudo-ambient synth piece.
• Longest Song Goes Last: "Listen", falling just short of seven minutes, closes out the album.
• Love Floats: In the "Head over Heels" music video, Orzabal's character floats from the ground floor to the upper floor (and vice versa) of the library because he's so head over heels for the Hot Librarian.
• Lunacy: This is the theme of the band's cover version of Robert Wyatt's "Sea Song", which served as the B-Side to "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)". Roland Orzabal is deeply fascinated by astrology, so it's no surprise that he's drawn to the lunar, nighttime and sea imagery, as all three are the domain of Cancer, Curt Smith's zodiac sign. Orzabal is firmly convinced that Smith's moodiness stems from the latter's Cancerian nature because their emotions, like the tides, are controlled by the moon, just as the "transformations" of the narrator's Love Interest are dependent on the lunar phases.
  You'll be different in the spring
  I know, you're a seasonal beast
  Like the starfish that drift in with the tide
  With the tide
  So until your blood runs
  To meet the next full moon
  Your madness fits in nicely with my own
  With my own
  Your lunacy fits neatly with my own
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is an upbeat and atmospheric piece about the threat of nuclear annihilation.
• Match Cut: Done extensively throughout the first "Mothers Talk" music video, repeatedly switching from shots of the little girl screaming to parallel shots of Roland Orzabal singing.
• Mr. Fanservice: Orzabal is bare-chested in the "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)" music video.
• Nerd Glasses:
  • In the second "Mothers Talk" music video, Roland Orzabal has horn-rimmed glasses in the scene where he's surrounded by newspapers to convey that his character is a Bookworm.
  • Curt Smith wears large, square-ish spectacles in the "Head over Heels" music video in order to portray a geeky library janitor.
• New Sound Album: Eclectic progressive pop, with the Synth-Pop elements of The Hurting being considerably downplayed.
• Non-Appearing Title: "Broken (Live)" lacks a Title Drop on account of being an instrumental rendition of "Broken". Likewise, the B-sides "Pharaohs" and "Sea Song" also exclude their titles from their lyrics.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • Despite the overtly psychiatry-inspired title, the album is far removed in subject matter from the personal angst of The Hurting.
  • The "US Remix" of "Mother's Talk" is actually a full-fledged re-recording.
• The Not-Remix: A very positively received example was applied to the album in 2014, courtesy of veteran Progressive Rock producer Steven Wilson.
• One-Word Title: "Shout", "Broken", "Listen" and "Pharaohs".
• Other Common Music Video Concepts:
  • "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is mostly a Travelogue Video, featuring Curt Smith driving around the American west coast while singing the song.
  • "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)" is a Monochrome Backdrop video, featuring a shirtless Roland Orzabal lip-syncing in a solid black room.
• Performance Video: All of the album's videos are one in some way or another; "Shout" and the first two "Mother's Talk" videos play it the straightest.
• Progressive Rock: The band incorporates a large amount of prog elements on this album with its jazz influences and the suitelike structure of its second side; various sources would consequently list it as a "progressive pop" album.
• Prone to Tears: In "I Believe", the narrator's emotional vulnerability is expressed by how easily he cries.
  And I believe that if I'm crying while I write these words
  Is it absurd, or am I being real?
  I believe that if you knew just what these tears were for
  They would just pour like every drop of rain
• Protest Song:
  • "Shout" is a meta example; the lyrics themselves don't actually protest anything in particular, but they encourage protest. Curt Smith also indicates that the song "encourages people not to do things without actually questioning them. People act without thinking because that's just the way things go in society."
  • Although it's not obvious in the song, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" was originally conceived as a commentary on the Cold War. Orzabal noted the original title was "Everybody Wants to Go to War", which producer Chris Hughes nixed as not being catchy enough. More Cold War commentary shows up on the album's closing track "Listen", although it's fairly cryptic there as well.
• Rearrange the Song:
  • "The Working Hour" reuses the melody of the much more minimalistic and downbeat "When in Love with a Blind Man".
  • Both "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)" and "Mothers Talk (US Remix)" are re-recordings of songs from the album. The former is a live performance, while the latter is a second studio rendition that omits the instrumental break at the end (keeping in line with the original version's single edit).
  • "Broken" is a faster-paced, arena-oriented re-recording of "We Are Broken", the B-side to the 1983 version of "Pale Shelter".
  • "Pharaohs", the B-side to "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", incorporates the main melody of the song at its end, but it is much slower and instrumental (although it features a spoken word voice reading of what appears to be weather forecasts).
• Sampling: The string intro and hits in "Mothers Talk" were culled from an unspecified Barry Mannilow record.
• Scenery Porn: The "Shout" music video was filmed at Durdle Door in Dorset, England, which has spectacular rocky cliffs and a stunning coastline.
• Science Is Bad: Implied in the first "Mothers Talk" music video, which features a little girl being uncomfortably studied by a team of scientists. Most of her segments revolve around an underlying desire to escape their laboratory.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: In the "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)" music video, there's a brief shot where Smith is at a fancy dinner party, and he looks extremely handsome and elegant in a tuxedo with a white bowtie. ^note He must also share this opinion because he would later wear the same outfit at public events.◊
• Shout-Out:
  • The album title (plus the B-Side "The Big Chair") comes from the made-for-TV movie Sybil, a fictionalized version of American art teacher Shirley Ardell Mason's struggles with dissociative identity disorder. In the film, Sybil (representing Manson) only feels comfortable when she's sitting in her therapist's "Big Chair".
  • "Mothers Talk" namedrops When the Wind Blows; the 1986 music video additionally parodies the comic, showing a 1950s British family attempting (and implicitly failing) to survive an oncoming nuclear strike.
  • "I Believe" namedrops Austrian singer Freddie Quinn's "Spanish Eyes", a vocal rendition of "Moon over Naples"; the song became a staple among traditional pop artists during the '60s.
  • For the sequence with the large gathering of people singing in the studio in the "Shout" music video, Curt Smith confessed◊ that "Yeah, we did pinch the idea from that Beatles video 'Hey Jude'."
  • Smith confirmed that the sight gag of index cards flying out of a drawer in the "Head over Heels" music video is a nod to the library ghost scene in Ghostbusters.
• Siamese Twin Songs: "Broken" segues directly into "Head over Heels", which itself segues directly into a reprise of "Broken". These latter two are almost always played together on the radio and live, and sometimes the "Broken" reprise isn't even noted on the track listing.
• Silly Simian: A baby chimpanzee features prominently in the "Head over Heels" music video, tying in with the trove of humorous imagery throughout its runtime by comedically contrasting its presence and crude mannerisms with the comparatively eloquent human library patrons.
• The Something Song: "Sea Song"
• Special Guest:
  • Mel Collins of King Crimson and Camel provides saxophone parts on "The Working Hour".
  • Night frontwoman Stevie Vann provides backing vocals on "Mothers Talk".
  • Andy Davis of Stackridge plays grand piano on "Head over Heels".
• Splash of Color: In the 1986 "Mothers Talk" music video, all the scenes with the 1950s family are sepia-toned, but the fires are yellow (such as the one burning in the fireplace and the flames that consume the newspaper the father was reading), plus the screen of their TV set displays broadcasts in full colour.
• Stealth Pun: The music video for the 1986 version of "Mothers Talk", themed around an impending nuclear war, revolves around a man, his wife, their son, and their dog. A nuclear family if you will.
• Surreal Music Video: The "Head over Heels" music video features a variety of cartoonish and disjointed events occurring in a library, which gradually lead to the library patrons forming a band to perform the song.
• Take Over the World: "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", which is about the Cold War. As Curt Smith elaborates:
  The concept is quite serious — it's about everybody wanting power, about warfare and the misery it causes.
• Talk About the Weather: Sung verbatim in "Head over Heels", where the narrator attempts to use it as an excuse to chat with his Love Interest.
• Title Track: Played with; the band recorded a song called "The Big Chair", but made it a B-Side rather than putting it on the main album. Appropriately, the 1999 remaster adds it on as a bonus track.
• Unnaturally Blue Lighting: The first "Mothers Talk" music video has an extremely vivid blue tint to highlight the laboratory setting that the young girl is trapped in while she's being monitored by scientists.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: One of the Sybil dialogue samples from "The Big Chair" is "The devil has the power to assume a pleasing shape".
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Roland Orzabal spends most of the music video for "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)" shirtless.
• War Is Hell: Curt Smith characterized "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" as being partly about "warfare and the misery it causes."
• Western Zodiac: Roland Orzabal, an adherent of western astrology, mentions in "I Believe" how "I believe that if it's written in the stars, that's fine / I can't deny that I'm a Virgo, too." Although Orzabal is a Leo, he was born within the Leo-Virgo cusp, so astrologists would say that he carries some Virgo traits.
• White Void Room: In the 1986 "Mothers Talk" music video, the band perform in a featureless white room.

---

In my mind's eye
One little boy, one little man
Funny how
Time flies

---