“Shout” by Tears for Fear, Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Tears for Fear's debut, The Hurting, caused the pop-rock duo composed of Roland Orzabel and Curt Smith to look to their darker emotions to produce honest lines that were rare in popular music at that time. By their sophomore album, Song from the Big Chair, Orzabel and Smith expanded their sights on bigger issues, but the lyrics still come off as personal.
The band's most recognizable song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" looks at greed on a personal level, which ultimately expands to an intricate, Cold War era of problems contemporary to the band's hit. The layered sounds of the Big Chair are quintessentially '80s, and if it weren't for the '80s renaissance that started in pop music c. 2004 which hasn't ended yet, Tears for Fears might have sounded dated. Today's song "Shout" doesn't sound old, though. It sounds retro.
I'M TALKIN' TO YOU. I didn't realize "Shout" is six and a half minutes long when I listened to it today. The radio single was whittled down to 4 minutes. The opening track on Songs from the Big Chair and the second single has a kind of "Canon in D" quality to it. It keeps the same chord progression in verse and chorus, but it adds layers of sound as it progresses, even turning into a round by the end of the song with Orzabel and Smith singing different parts. According to Orzabel, the song isn't about merely letting out emotion. Listeners mistake this song for being about primal scream theory, as the band talked about "Mad World" being influenced by the work of Arthur Janov, author of The Primal Scream. Orzebel stated that the song "is actually more concerned with political protest." Smith stated that the song "encourages people not to do things without actually questioning them." As Tears for Fears is perhaps one of the best textbook cases of a New Wave band, it's important to remember that New Wave is sometimes called post-punk. Punk rock, in its original form didn't translate well to American audiences who didn't get the anarchy message aimed at British politics. New Wave was a British export sound with a more commercial sound. Rockers of the '80s looked to international issues, the fear of nuclear war, corporate greed, and inequality, and laced them subtly into hit songs. "Shout" is a song about standing up for your rights.
LET IT ALL OUT. I think that the music of Tears for Fears has become timeless, especially after how much the sound has been appropriated by the emo bands of the '00s. The band didn't survive well into the '90s, though. The duo broke up in 1991, and Orzabel kept recording music as Tears for Fears until 1995. After the '80s, though, Tears for Fears fell out of fashion. New Wave gave way to grunge and hip-hop/r&b. Perhaps Tears for Fears could have lasted, but there was one factor about their music that left a bad taste in listeners' mouths--the visual aspect. Tears for Fears videos are cringy and laughable. The two English lads with their big hair and big teeth, dancing at the British seashore doesn't do justice to the song. Released in 1985, during the height of MTV, every successful band had to make a music video. This trend continues even today. And as budgets increased, videos became more artistic. But before a bad music video could end a career, because there were so many bad videos, there was Tears for Fears giving us all of what would become cliche about the '80s. The '90s and early '00s fashions on TV, which in retrospect were also pretty awful, had conditioned me to feel very uncomfortable, almost nauseous, when I saw something from the '80s, whether it was big hair, short shorts on with terribly hairy legs, glasses with big rims, tight, straight-leg Levi's that covered the belly button, or big hair and perms. Today, the culture has normalized, even created a nostalgia for the '80s. We have many of those fashions in our current culture, minus the big hair. And still, Tears for Fears' music videos are still cringy and wouldn't be shot today.
Official Music Video:
"Shout 2000" cover by Disturbed
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