A little stuck for topics this week (as well as making time to write them) so here's another Match the Song Title post a little earlier in the rotation after the last one. I try to space these out every six months or so.
But this album deserves "Match the Song Title" treatment, I suppose. It's not only one of the biggest LPs of the 1980s, but this year marks its 40th anniversary. It is also one of the last LPs I bought before I went away to college.
This marked the end of an era. I think that this album, "Brothers and Arms" by Dire Straits and "Dream of the Blue Turtles" by Sting were the last LPs I purchased before moving away. Once I arrived at college, LP buys dwindled to almost nothing. Yes, I brought my turntable with me, but I don't know if I brought any albums. Cassettes and, later, CDs were much more portable for a college student with limited space. LPs just didn't make sense.
How things have changed. Not only are LPs nearly as popular (and more expensive) than ever, but Tears For Fears is yet another one of those bands from my younger days that have enjoyed massive retro appreciation over the last few years. "Songs from the Big Chair" received a lukewarm reception from critics but they are much more favorable about it now.
As for me, I bought this in the summer of '85. I barely knew Tears For Fears, perhaps hearing about their previous album, "The Hurting" on the UK radio countdown show I listened to in '84. Seems odd to say now, but they seemed a bit strange then, and it took "Everybody Wants To Rule the World" playing on the radio in the spring of '85 to get me to notice. When "Shout" became the follow-up hit, that's when I bought the album. This was typical: for a new band I didn't know, I had to really like at least two of their songs to buy the LP.
The rest of the album -- with one notable exception -- isn't as catchy as those two songs. But it made me a TFF fan. I bought "The Hurting" that fall (in cassette form, of course). I'd miss "The Seeds Of Love" in 1989, but I bought the cassette "Elemental" in 1993, which I did like a lot.
They're still making music and released an album in 2022.
Anyway, for 40 years ago, here's a Match the Song Title. The track list.
"Match the Song Title: Songs from the Big Chair - Tears For Fears
Track 1: Shout
The easiest song-card match find in the history of me doing this series. All I had to do was pick any Topps card set from the last four years and I'd be greeted with my choice of players shouting. I don't pretend to understand the showcase shouting we see all the time, but I know it's probably a generational thing. I questioned Trevor Megill's screaming in the first inning of the Brewers' Game 5 clincher over the Cubs and I was accused of being insensitive to someone who had just recovered from injury. OK.
This song, which was quite different from Tears For Fears' super-introspective songs on The Hurting, was written about primal scream therapy. Perhaps that's what Megill was doing.
Track 2: The Working Hour
Baseball players usually take batting practice before a game for about an hour -- or so I've always been told. This is the thing that baseball players do that seems most like work, aside from something like calisthenics in the outfield. Frankly, as a fan, I have a difficult time deciphering what is work and what isn't when it comes to baseball playing. It all looks like fun to me.
The first two songs on the album are both more than six minutes. TFF has said in the past that their inspiration for this album was progressive rock.
Track 3: Everybody Wants To Rule the World
I'm sure I've said this before, but I consider this the most '80s song of all-time. This is the song I'd point to if someone who didn't experience the '80s wanted to know how the decade sounded and how it felt.
I still have a specific memory associated with this song. When I went to community college after high school, I often took the city bus on the way home. I didn't have a car at the time. I recall someone on the bus was playing this song on a boom box as the bus parked to let college students on. A young woman got on the bus, I knew her from around campus. Her name was Lisa. She was tall and slender and often wore wife-beater shirts and black leather pants. That's what I think of when I hear this song.
As for the card, that's a bunch of guys ruling the world right there. That's what MLB players want to do every year -- win the World Series and rule the world.
Track 4: Mothers Talk
Insert-padding like these 2017 Topps Salute cards actually come in handy sometimes.
This song was the first release off the album in the United Kingdom. Roland Orzabal has said in the past that it's a failed attempt to sound like The Talking Heads and he doesn't like the song.
SIDE 2
Track 5: I Believe
Follow me on this one. The song was dedicated to Robert Wyatt in the album's liner notes. Wyatt is a hugely influential former musician from the psychedelic era and an original member of Soft Machine, an English band from the 1960s that was influential in that genre, as well as in progressive and jazz arenas. Soft Machine toured with the Jimi Hendrix Experiment in 1968.
"I Believe" was the fifth single released from this album though I don't think it was released in America. I do know it was the reverse side of the long-play single of Everybody Wants To Rule the World, because I bought that, too.
Track 6: Broken
Easily the shortest song on the album at 2:38. It's apparently about unrequited love. Because it's so short, it is often considered the "lead-in" to the next song, the hit "Head Over Heels".
I was getting ready to watch the first game of the ALCS between the Blue Jays and Mariners and I was so surprised by how many Blue Jays that were simply names to me, I knew almost nothing else about them. "Where's Bo Bichette," I asked? Then I found out he was broken.
Track 7: Head Over Heels
A terrific song. Great piano lead-in, great video. I remember being marveled when it started playing on MTV and the radio. This group I had barely heard of was now on their third monster hit!
As for the card I thought "I better have an Ozzie Smith flipping card!" I did. Although perhaps I should have gone with a Red Sox card as the monkey in the video is wearing a Red Sox jersey.
Track 8: Listen
Once you get to the '90s, there are headphones all over football cards. Coaches are always, always listening.
The third six-minute song on the album and the longest song of them all. The lyrics are up for debate, but there are anti-war overtones as well references to the singer and therapy.
And there's where the needle comes off the record.
As is the case with many of these '80s albums, I cannot believe they are now 40 years old -- I commend any 20-year-old who is listening to this album because I would never be caught listening to a song from 1945 in 1985.
I still have this LP (that's a picture of it at the top of the post). It's been a very long time since I played it. I should give it at least one spin before the year is up.
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