Tears For Fears – “Songs From The Big Chair”

Spring 2020 saw the 35th anniversary of Tears For Fears iconic ten million selling album “Songs From The Big Chair”. The 35th celebrations included the release of a limited picture disc version of the album and a reissue of the much sought after super deluxe 4CD/2DVD boxset which currently changes hands for hundreds of dollars.

“Songs From The Big Chair” was Tears For Fears second album and spawned classic worldwide hit songs such as the US No.1 singles “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” (UK No.2) and “Shout” (UK No.4) as well as “Head over Heels” (US No.3, UK No.12) and “Mother’s Talk” (No.14, US No.27). Upon its first release, “Songs From The Big Chair” spent 30 weeks in the UK top ten album chart, a whole year in the top thirty and only left the charts 18 months later. The story was very much the same all over the world, the album spent five weeks at No.1 in the US, and much like the UK, it was in the Billboard Chart for 18 months. To date, the album has sold over five million copies Stateside and is triple Platinum certified in the UK for sales of more than 900,000 copies.

Looking back at the album Roland Orzabal commented, “Pop music was still a growth industry. It hadn’t sort of stagnated, stalled, diversified into streaming like it is nowadays. We were young, we were both good-looking and we had the right music. As we move further and further from that decade and you keep hearing “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” in various forms I do think it is an era-defining album”. Curt Smith “You would never normally get three songs that strong in an album. But balance that out with tracks like “Listen”, “The Working Hour”, all those things that give it air and give it time to breathe I think is what makes it something more than just the sum of its parts. I think the album had a lot more depth than a lot of those other albums of that time. And albums of more depth tend to stick around longer.”

The album was made available for the first time as a limited-edition picture disc, and due to overwhelming demand, the super deluxe version will be reissued. The 4 x CD/2 x DVD box set features a multitude of remixes, live tracks, BBC sessions, B-sides, previously unreleased tracks and 5.1 surround sound and stereo mixes of the album mixed by four-time Grammy nominee, Steven Wilson. The original eight track album is accompanied by additional discs with single edits, remixes and also the ‘re-invented’ “Everybody Wants To RUN The World”, which was released in 1986 in support of Sport Aid and reached No.5 in the UK singles chart. Disc 4 features Top Of The Pops appearances and chat show appearances by the duo surrounding the promotion of the album and its singles.

Stay in touch with Tears For Fears through their WEBSITE and their FACEBOOK page

Submit your songs to us via SubmitHub, MusoSoup or MySphera to be guaranteed a listen. Boost your streams, discover new fans and increase sales with the Indie Spotify Bible.