Forty years ago today: Songs from the Big Chair, one of the best albums (start to finish as great as any album of that decade got) of the ’80s dropped. I was a freshman in high school, a total classic rock freak, allergic to just about everything “new” — and instinctively averse to music with synths…it was just the way it was if you were young and dumb, filled with opinions that were seldom informed or earned (I mean classic rock did and does rule, but as we know the world’s a lot bigger & better than that…)
I remember hearing this (on the radio, obviously) and it was undeniable from first listen (the other huge single, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” became so ubiquitous it was impossible to despise or avoid, and boy has that song aged well in every way). This did what the best art always does: it attracted me, disoriented me, obliged me to keep listening and allowing the thoughts & feelings that followed. This was very much of its time, right in the middle of a decade that was already tilting toward hair metal and soulless corporate rock (arena concerts and MTV and blah blah blah), but it wasn’t imitating anyone, it wasn’t following any obvious path, and it was / is so unassailably original; it was a statement and a gauntlet thrown.
(The two big singles, followed by another big single, the irrepressible “Head Over Heels” — my god were these guys locked in or what?– and it was impossible to deny Tears for Fears their moment in the sun. It took me some more time, and experience, to both understand and appreciate the deeper cut that, older and wiser listeners may agree is the album’s centerpiece, “The Working Hour.” I came, in time, to love it, and it’s now not only my absolute favorite song from Big Chair, it’s one of my all time favorite songs, a devastating, beautiful, honest, humane vision. Absolute perfection.)
It’s funny. 40 years later, this is now “classic” and it shares many of the qualities the best old school songs we love so well have: it conjures up a discernible time & place but manages to be outside any boundaries or definitions — it’s human artistic expression that lives beyond…a place we’re fortunate to revisit whenever we hear the sounds.
