18th March 2020 sees the 35th anniversary of Tears For Fears classic single ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ and to celebrate the iconic video has been transferred to hi-resolution for the first time.
Taken from Tears For Fears second album Songs From The Big Chair, Everybody Want To Rule World was one of three #1 US singles, the others being ‘Shout’ and ‘Head over Heels’. The track, was the third single to be taken from the album, was a massive hit across the world and has now been played on US radio over 7 million times, and over the years has been interpreted by artists as diverse as Nas, Lorde, Gloria Gaynor, Patti Smith and Weezer to name but a few.
For what some people now see as the quintessential Tears For Fears track, the song had humble beginnings and almost didn’t get written and was a last-minute addition during the recording sessions for the album. The original lyrics were ‘Everybody Wants To Go To War’ and the band thought that despite the strong lyrical content the tune was a little lightweight compared to the rest of the record.
When looking back at the album Pitchfork said “More than any other Tears for Fears track, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” most successfully transposes Janov’s (the inventor of Primal Scream therapy which the band were avid followers of and informed the band’s name) psychological texts into a pop song with global resonance. Though “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is obviously a meditation on power, you could project virtually every major issue of the 1980s onto the lyrics: the environment (“Turn your back on mother nature”), the fleeting nature of financial success (“Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure/Nothing ever lasts forever”), authoritarian rule (“Even while we sleep/We will find you”), and the Cold War (“Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down”)”
For the 35th anniversary of the song, the accompanying video has been upscaled to hi-res for the first time. Filmed in early 1985 it was directed by famed video maker Nigel Dick and shot in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and the Salton Sea in California as well as in a London studio. In the video Curt Smith is seen driving a 1966 Austin Healey 3000 Mark III painted British Racing Green, it is a reminder that despite all of the Americana imagery in the video Tears For Fears were a very British band. At the time Curt owned a 1959 Triumph TR3A, but sadly one couldn’t be sourced for the shoot for the so they settled on the Austin which has a similar look.
The 35th anniversary of Songs From The Big Chair has seen the release of the album being 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 4CD/2DVD 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.
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 30 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 #1 in the US, and much like the UK, it was in the Billboard Chart for 18 months.
Picture Disc https://TearsForFears.lnk.to/SFTBC-PictureDisc
Songs From The Big Chair Box Set https://tearsforfears.lnk.to/SFTBC-Box
The Hurting Box Set https://tearsforfears.lnk.to/TheHurting-Box
