Must-Listen: Strong Songs podcast on Tears for Fears

And why Everybody Wants to Rule the World is my theme song

An unusual off-schedule recommendation! And a story.

And I will start with the story.

38 years ago I was wrapping up college and super into alternative rock. here in the Bay Area I listened to the K-Quake, which eventually became Live 105. I didn’t really start buying a lot of my own music until college, when I became a Tower Records regular. I have always been the Like the song? Buy the whole album! kind of gal…even now in the age of digital downloads. Who knows what other gems lie in a 10-song set from someone who has released a perfect song?

Tears for Fears released their second album, Songs from the Big Chair, in February of 1985. The single for Everybody Wants to Rule the World was released a month later. It was my senior year in college, and I’d be heading off to Michigan to do year one of a theatre apprenticeship program. I’d skip walking my graduation in order to get there in time to do the season auditions.

So somewhere in those last couple of months before leaving, when the weather was already nice, I spent an afternoon at my friend Jeff’s house, or more precisely in his backyard by the pool. I wasn’t much of a weed person, so I don’t remember if I was actually a little high or if a few hours in the sun just made me feel that way, but I was lying there pretty blissed out when the song Everybody Wants to Rule the World had its turn on the mix tape (natch) that we were listening to.

When people talk about hyper-focus, being in the zone, or getting into a state of flow I always think of those next 3-4 minutes. I listened to that song, which was still pretty new to me, I’m sure, and I noticed every little musical nuance, every layer upon layer that the band added. It’s like I could hear every single track with total clarity on its own, but also the ecstatic whole.

I’m a musician, but it’s not like I hear everything always that way. Something about that moment was simply perfection. I did a music minor in college and I remember giving a presentation on how music can evoke physical responses and emotions…that certain chords or sequences will replicate that pretty faithfully. At the time I used the ending of Purple rain and Samuel barber’s Adagio for Strings as my two examples.

If I’d given the presentation a year later, I’d ahve used Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Ever since that serene moment in a California backyard, hearing that song fills me with that same kind of bliss and mental clarity. I hear it that way every single time.

When Ally McBeal came out and had episodes about everyone having a theme song, I knew Everybody Wants to Rule the World was mine. Because it represents a time when everything was ahead of me, but my inner critic was completely silent…there was no room for anything but appreciating the artistry I was hearing. It doesn’t hurt that the lyrics are very evocative too:

Welcome to your life, there’s no turning back

and the lyric that spoke to every time I felt like it was me (and occasionally you and me) against the world.

There’s a room where the light won’t find you,
holding hands while the walls come tumbling down

and the one I’ve sung many a time when I’m frustrated in my professional life:

I can’t stand this indecision, married with a lack of vision

I still listen to the song regularly. I still feel that same awe at how perfectly that song is constructed. I still feel that hyper-focus.

So when I saw that Kirk Hamilton was kicking off his new season of the Strong Songs podcast by digging into this song, I was thrilled. And the episode does not disappoint. it’s like Kirk was with me that afternoon so many years ago. He points out every layer, every nuance, every build that I’ve obsessed over all these years. but he of course goes one better by knowing which instruments were used and how and pointing out even more things about the musical structure and choices the band made.

Check it out:

And listen to the song.

Still on a high from listening to the episode, I wanted to share it with you immediately! Hope you enjoy.

Do you have a song that does this for you? I’d love to know what it is!