It’s not really about much. It’s just one of those cheap pop lyrics.
— Roland Orzabal
Today’s song of the day is especially appropriate for me because my WordPress account has been updated and, after five years of using classic editor, I’m just now figuring out how to use block editor. I can tell already that it’s going to take me a while to get the hang of this but I think I’m going to like it eventually. Change can be difficult but it can still be a good thing.
Change was Tears For Fears’s fourth released single and it was their second big hit, after Mad World. It was also their first song to chart in the United States. This video was directed by Clive Richardson, who was also responsible for several early Depeche Mode videos.
Yesterday, when I wrote about the video for Shout by Tears For Fears, I apparently made up a song that doesn’t actually exist. I wrote that Shout was the band’s signature song, along with Everyone Wants To Rule The World. I also wrote about the joint vocalist of Tears for Fears, Richard Orzabal. Not only did I make up a song that didn’t exist but I also created an extra member of Tears For Fears. As everyone knows, the song is called Everybody Wants To Rule The World and the singer is named Roland Orzabal. I don’t know how I screwed up those two simple facts last night. Maybe I was writing from Earth-2.
For many people, Everybody Wants To Rule The World will always be the song from Real Genius. The song actually first appeared on the 1985 album, Songs From The Big Chair, for which it was a last-minute addition. Roland Orzabal has said that he originally felt that the song was too lightweight and that it wouldn’t be a good fit with the rest of the album but producer Chris Hughes convinced Orzabal to include the song. Hughes felt that the song would chart well in America and he turned out to be correct. Would the song have been as popular if it had been called by its original title, Everybody Wants To Go To War? That’s like asking if War and Peace would have been as much of a success if Tolstoy had called it War! What Is It Good For?
As for the video, it features Curt Smith driving through the desert, people racing dune buggies, men dancing in front of gas pumps, and the Cabazon Dinosaurs. The scenes of Curt in the desert were filmed in California and Nevada while the scenes of Tears For Fears performing were shot in London. Curt Smith has said that the shooting of the video was a “disaster” and that there was a serious accident involving the dune buggies that led to a child being thrown from one of the vehicles and hitting his head on a rock, leaving him temporarily unconscious. Despite all of the difficulty involved in shooting the video, it was still placed in heavy rotation on MTV and played no small role in making the song a hit.
Everybody Wants To Rule The World spent two weeks as the number one song in the U.S. In the UK, it peaked at number two, the only thing keeping it from reach the top being the charity single, We Are The World.
Tears For Fears frontman Roland Orzabal and keyboardist Ian Stanley were both practitioners of primal scream therapy, in which people confronted their fears and insecurities by shouting. This song was inspired by both the treatment and political protest.
The video, which was put in heavy rotation on MTV and become one of the defining videos and songs of the 1980s, features Orazbal and Curt Smith letting it all out on the cliffside at Durdle Door in Dorset. The video was one of the 300-something videos to have been directed by Nigel Dick, who has done videos for almost everyone.
Shout spend three weeks as the number one single in the US and has since become Tears for Fears signature song, along with Everybody Wants To Rule The World.
Today’s music video of the day is for a song that I used to enjoy listening to back when I was living in Vice City. Believe it or not, I used to steal cars just so I could turn the radio over to Wave 103 and listen to songs like Pale Shelter by Tears For Fears. I know I’m not alone. Vice City was a crazy place to live, man.
As for the video, it was directed by Steve Barron (who was responsible for several classic new wave videos) and is about weird things happening in Los Angeles.
It begins with a classic California scene as a woman in a red, one-piece bathing suit dives into a pool. She’s soon joined by an alligator, which causes her to fly straight into the air. This followed by a police officer directing traffic, a child raising his hand in school, a woman taking laundry off a line, a soccer team celebrating a goal, a blonde stretching in bed, and an airplane flying over an airport. When the laundry woman burns a shirt with an iron, it leaves a giant, steaming imprint in the middle of the runway.
Standing in the middle of imprint, Curt Smith drops his guitar which ruins everyone’s day. The police officer loses his cool. The blonde realizes she’s overslept. The laundry woman panics as it starts to rain. The child in school isn’t called on and retaliates by making a paper airplane that he throws out the window.
Soon, hundreds of paper airplane are raining down on Curt Smith and Roland Orzbal. Most of them seem to be hitting Curt.
Everyone in the video looks up to the sky and things get better. The school child is reunited with the laundry woman. Curt fixes his broken guitar. The blonde gets out of bed, drives her car, and catches the eye of the policeman. The soccer players congratulates themselves on a good game.
Curts throw his guitar into the air. Back in the school, all the students start to throw paper airplanes. The alligator gets back in the pool. A paper airplane hits Curt right between the eyes. The woman in the red bathing suit heads back down to Earth while the alligator eats Curt’s guitar.
And what better way to start things off than with the Head Over Heels scene from 2001’s Donnie Darko. Directed by Richard Kelly, this scene not only makes brilliant use of the Tears For Fears song, Head Over Heels, but it also manages to introduce every character and set up almost every important relationship in the film.
It’s brilliant but I always find myself wondering what Drew Barrymore had against Sparkle Motion.
I will readily admit that I am a child of the 80’s. I grew up listening to 80’s music whether it was metal (though I didn’t truly listen to them until the 90’s), rap all the way to synthpop and new wave which became quite popular during the decade with groups such as Depeche Mode, INXS, Duran Duran and The Cure. One band which I listened to quite a bit during the mid-80’s was the British new wave band Tears For Fears. It’s from this band that the latest “Song of the Day” comes from: “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”.
The song is actually an 80’s classic that has stood the test of time and musical taste. While many scoff and ridicule most of the pop songs which blew up during the 80’s this particular song from Tears For Fears was never one of them. While the song does have a foundation in the synthpop sound of the time the song itself doesn’t really sound like most of the 80’s pop music. The lyrics are socially aware without being too preachy. In fact, if one was to listen to the song now it’s original message of limitless optimism in the future for everyone actually sounds a bit selfish in today’s social climate.
The song has been covered quite a bit by many singers and bands of different stripes from such groups as The Dresden Dolls, Clare & The Reasons and Dru Hill right up to the pop punk band Care Bares on Fire whose cover was used during the end credits for Season 5, Episode 9 of True Blood.
Let this song kick-off my 80’s music revival and all of it due to the awesome inclusion of some classic 80’s pop tracks in the equally awesome and great new Netflix series, Stranger Things.
Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Welcome to your life There’s no turning back Even while we sleep We will find you acting on your best behavior Turn your back on Mother Nature Everybody wants to rule the world
It’s my own design It’s my own remorse Help me to decide Help me make the most Of freedom and of pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever Everybody wants to rule the world
There’s a room where the light won’t find you Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down When they do I’ll be right behind you So glad we’ve almost made it So sad they had to fade it Everybody wants to rule the world
I can’t stand this indecision Married with a lack of vision Everybody wants to rule the world Say that you’ll never never never never need it One headline why believe it? Everybody wants to rule the world
All for freedom and for pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever Everybody wants to rule the world
I will readily admit that I am a child of the 80’s. I grew up listening to 80’s music whether it was metal (though I didn’t truly listen to them until the 90’s), rap all the way to synthpop and new wave which became quite popular during the decade with groups such as Depeche Mode, INXS, Duran Duran and The Cure. One band which I listened to quite a bit during the mid-80’s was the British new wave band Tears For Fears. It’s from this band that the latest “Song of the Day” comes from: “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”.
The song is actually an 80’s classic that has stood the test of time and musical taste. While many scoff and ridicule most of the pop songs which blew up during the 80’s this particular song from Tears For Fears was never one of them. While the song does have a foundation in the synthpop sound of the time the song itself doesn’t really sound like most of the 80’s pop music. The lyrics are socially aware without being too preachy. In fact, if one was to listen to the song now it’s original message of limitless optimism in the future for everyone actually sounds a bit selfish in today’s social climate.
The song has been covered quite a bit by many singers and bands of different stripes from such groups as The Dresden Dolls, Clare & The Reasons and Dru Hill right up to the pop punk band Care Bares on Fire whose cover was used during the end credits for Season 5, Episode 9 of True Blood which used the song’s title as the episode title. I’m not a huge fan of that particular cover which made me decide to choose the original version as the latest “Song of the Day” to point out that the original may be old, but it will always be the best.
Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Welcome to your life There’s no turning back Even while we sleep We will find you acting on your best behavior Turn your back on Mother Nature Everybody wants to rule the world
It’s my own design It’s my own remorse Help me to decide Help me make the most Of freedom and of pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever Everybody wants to rule the world
There’s a room where the light won’t find you Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down When they do I’ll be right behind you So glad we’ve almost made it So sad they had to fade it Everybody wants to rule the world
I can’t stand this indecision Married with a lack of vision Everybody wants to rule the world Say that you’ll never never never never need it One headline why believe it? Everybody wants to rule the world
All for freedom and for pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever Everybody wants to rule the world
Through the Shattered Lens 