xtcian

suffer little children

3/29/04

Driving back from a late-night errand last night, I heard a very slow version of the song "Mad World" on KCRW. The same tune has cropped up on several mix CDs over the last year, and haunted the latter sections of the movie "Donnie Darko." The song came up on a discussion group, and one of the members was stunned to find out it was originally written by Tears For Fears.

Now, I have been a not-so-secret Tears For Fears dork for decades now, as I think Roland Orzabal, when he's trying, can do amazing things with pop music. Their first album was "The Hurting," which was a semi-permanent cassette in my first Walkman, featuring made-for-high-school lines like "I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad / The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had." Like my brother Sean said, they were "two guys who wanted to create music based on primal scream therapy that sounded nothing like John Lennon's 'Mother'."

Can you imagine any band in this day and age getting together because they wanted to write songs about Primal Scream therapy? Fucking unthinkable, but par for the course in 1982. Primal Scream therapy was developed by Arthur Janov, who believed that most of life's fear, anger and angst came from the horrifying moment we were ripped from our mother's womb, and the only way to be "whole" again was to engage in a ritualistic re-enactment of the birthing process. This eventually led to patients screaming – but not the usual shrieks. These birthing, or "primal" screams were guttural, nerve-wracking and must be heard to be fathomed. The easiest-to-find example would have to be, well, John Lennon's song "Mother."

Anyway, in 1985 Tears For Fears released "Songs From the Big Chair," which had "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Shout" on it, and it made a gazillion dollars. My favorite song from that album, however, was "Head Over Heels," which I think is one of the greatest anthems to crack the Top 10. 1985 also had my other favorite Top 10 song ever, Sting's "Fortress Around Your Heart."

Yes, I know that "Hey Ya" is awesome, and "When Doves Cry" was singular, and "Walking on the Sun" was marvelous – but "Head Over Heels" and "Fortress Around Your Heart" are truly masterpieces of the pop form. Listen to the echoing piano in "HOH" and the swirling-chord gorgeousness of "FAYH."

These days it's hard to make a case for either Sting or TFF. Sting seems to represent all that is wrong with yuppie new-age excess, he writes boring songs, and always comes off as a bit of a tantric yoga asshole. Tears For Fears is drama fag pap to most people.

But let me tell you this: shut up about Sting. He is a clear recipient of the McCartney Rule, which states (in his case) that any man who wrote "Roxanne," "Walking on the Moon," "Message in a Bottle" and "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" doesn't owe you anything.

And thank god TFF are getting a little bit of respect back. On the heels of this great cover of "Mad World," TFF is releasing their first real album since the daisy-age classic "Sowing the Seeds of Love." Fittingly enough, it's called Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. I may not need the adolescent charge of Janovian Scream Therapy to get me through calculus class, but I will still line up to buy the latest offering of some old heroes.