Songs from the Big Chair

Tears For Fears

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Original Release Date: February 17, 1985
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Polygram Records
• ASIN: B000001FC0
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #60,394 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Considering that Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, the English duo known as Tears for Fears, were avid followers of Arthur Janov, father of the Primal Scream form of mental therapy, it wasn't surprising that one of their biggest hits was titled "Shout." What was surprising was how the two managed to take all their deep-rooted inner turmoil and make such positively buoyant music. Case in point: their other Songs from the Big Chair-spawned, No. 1 hit, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," was a meditative contemplation of the struggle for power within interpersonal relationships as a metaphor for global supremacy--which, thank god, had a good beat so you could at least dance to it. --Billy Altman

Product Description
Japanese only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD - playable on all CD players) pressing. Universal. 2008. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best CDs ever made, August 13, 2002

By	Distant Voyageur "Nicholas Computer" (Io) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Tears For Fears music has endured very well, far better than alot of music from the 1980s. What TFF put in their music was depth and creativity, something alot of other music at the time and especially now lacks.

There were two huge hits off The Big Chair. Shout is one of the angriest and heaviest songs with it's blasting guitars and angry lyrics. Everybody Wants To Rule The World is the other one. EWTRTW is one of the best songs that 1985 offered. There was one lesser hit and that was Head Over Heals.

In my opinion I like the parent album version more than the version on both the Tears Roll Down(Greatest Hits 82-92) & Shout: Very Best Of TFF mainly because the song ends with a live performance of Broken as an attachment for a more incredible listen.

The best song though in my opinion is The Working Hour. This track my favorite song off The Big Chair. It's a very intense song that begins with as an eerie track but then African drums come in and then a huge wash of powerful synthesizers and rock guitars come in.

The other track to point out is the final track(On the 8 song editon of this CD)Listen. Listen is a very apocolyptic song with a cold brooding atmosphere that is more intensified with the industrial mechanical beats and sound effects combined with dark melodies.

The Big Chair was re-issued in 1999 with seven bonus tracks added. The Big Chair(song title), Empire Building, & Marauders are also available on the brilliant B-Sides rarities collection Saturning Martial Lunatic. One track called The Conflict was previously unrealeased. The other three are remixes.

For those who might be turned off by the excessively abstract bonus tracks I wouls say get the older edition but for those want to start their TFF collections get the remastered editions of their first three albums. They're all worth owning.

A great album that was very well handled in it's reissue The Big Chair deserves a place in everyones music collection.

After this TFF would morph into a whole different sound with the artistic pinnacle known as The Seeds Of Love

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tears for Fears reminds us of what could have been, April 29, 2005

By	Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

"Songs From the Big Chair" was the first CD I ever bought, which I did about four months before I actually had a CD player (stockpiling for new technology is a dominant gene). But this was one of the first really hot CDs and it was where I got my infamous "three song rule." This rule states: If you are interested in an album by a new group all you need to justify the purchase is for the album to have three solid songs you would like to have. This one offered up "Shout," "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Head Over Heels." The first two made it to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and last one topped off at #3. Of course the album went to the top of the charts as well, but more importantly there are other interesting tracks on the album besides the big three. "Heads Over Heels" is actually part of a suite with "Broken," and both "The Working Hour" and "Listen" are above average.

This edition offers up extended mixes of "Shout" and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" as bonus tracks, but they are hardly necessary to justify having this album in your music collection. I still listen to "Songs From the Big Chair" about once a month and there is always a touch of regret that Tears for Fears self-destructed. The group produced a rather unique blend of synth-pop that made it stand out from most of what was going on in 1985 and the lyrics would have made for nice essay questions on a psychoanalysis exam:

They gave you life
And in return you gave them hell
As cold as ice
I hope we live to tell the tale

Who would have thought that Arthur Janov's primal scream theory would result in deep lyrics? But then the group's name comes from that same source and the whole idea was much more in evidence on their debut album "Hurting" ("Mad World" from that album is reworked to great effect by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules at the end of the cult film "Donnie Darko," which also used "Head Over Heels" to make Tears for Fears the official group of the film). Such ideas are still in evidence on this album, but if "Hurting" is about emotional pain then "Songs From the Big Chair" is moving on to the healing process. This is not exactly a concept album, but the songs do fit together in a way that suggests a definite sense of direction. But then when they start singing about four leaf clovers and do a techno-rap song like "Mother's Talk" you are just going to lose people who are going to go back to the melodies and not bother to figure out the words and dive for deeper meanings.

Looking at the writing credits on these songs you would have said Tears for Fears was clearly Roland Orzabal's group, but by the time Curt Smith bolted they had produced only one more album in three years which had one decent song on it. So Tears of Fears does not exactly come under the heading of a One Hit Wonder, but they certainly only had the solid really great album. However, unlike other groups you might point to in similar circumstances from this same time period (e.g., A-Ha, Mr. Mister), this was the group I really thought had the musical talent to build on. In retrospect, I think it is clear that they did have the talent and Tears for Fears is arguably the most memorable "lost" group of that period.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Memories of '85...a banner year!, December 12, 1999

By	"roadtripper" (Vancouver Canada) - See all my reviews

Some of these tunes I still can't get enough of: the timeless summer-romance quality of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", the powerful "Shout", the subtle "Working Hour", and the angst-ridden "Head Over Heels".

*Sigh*...having to grow up from those grade 8 days...