I’ve been what you might refer to as a reluctant Tears For Fears fan for most of my life. Like with Crowded House, it wasn’t until well after their hit-making days that I could actually admit that my musical tastes have pretty much circulated around these two bands all along – even if my tastes diverge from them as frequently as they do mesh with them.
Being a “metal guy” in high school, it was pretty much totally uncool to say how much I truly loved Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and Tears For Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” but thankfully I can’t see a reason to find shame in admitting that now. I was a stupid kid who swore up and down that Def Leppard was the best band in the world, even while knowing that “Don’t Dream It’s Over” was just about the most gorgeous piece of songwriting I’d ever heard: That’s just not cool to admit.
Not to slight Def Leppard. I’m just saying, take a look at my collection and see which two of the three bands mentioned above still have a home there. And why wouldn’t they? Those two songs are damn near the premier examples of the perfect pop song – outside of, say, the output of a little Liverpool band in the 1960s.
I know Tears For Fears ended for a lot of people with 1989’s The Seeds of Love, what with Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal getting all Pink Floyd: Smith took off for a solo career and Orzabal continued on with the “band.” Fans pretty much turned a deaf ear to Orzabal’s two offerings, but as with all things of this nature, I have to ask myself that if they didn’t have the burden of living up to the Tears for Fears moniker, wouldn’t most fans have loved them?
Most likely, they really weren’t all that much different than the more serious pieces on Seeds of Love, if maybe they indulged in the big sappy balladeering too much. (Well, why not, when you’ve got the glorious golden pipes of Roland Orzabal pushing them forward?)
With Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, released on Sept. 14, 2004, the boys mended whatever likely meaningless differences had separated them. Going in, I got the usual worries that arise from something like this: Was this a cash-in, an album most likely filled with very tiresome and hackneyed filler and one hopefully Big Hit – or is this an album of music that simply had to be made, needed to be made, filtered down from the ether to the Tears For Fears teammates who, in dramatic 1980s teen-flick fashion, made a mad dash to each other after the Big Revelation woke them from their depressed slumbers (and probably through likely rain-slicked streets, you know?)
Then the album’s release got pushed back, and Arista Records unceremoniously dropped the band. Returning to Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, I still have to ask: “Arista, what the hell were you thinking?” Even if the album couldn’t possibly match the sales of Songs From the Big Chair or The Seeds of Love, this remains the kind of artistic statement labels should want to have among their roster.
Everybody Loves a Happy Ending picked right up where Seeds left off, as if the 1990s never happened – beginning with an especially fitting placement of the title song in the first-track position. “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending” summed up everything people loved about Tears For Fears. It was all here, from the soaring vocals to the breakdown in the second half of the song that features a happily lifted-from-the-Beatles-songbook melody, complete with Orzabal’s well-placed impression of that ascending “wooooh” thing that Paul McCartney pretty much patented.
So what if the chorus of “Call Me Mellow” nicks the melody of “There She Goes” by the La’s? No one seemed to care that the chorus of Modest Mouse’s “Float On” is just James’ “She’s a Star,” so who’s to blame Tears For Fears for borrowing a great chorus, too? And it had to be intentional that “Who Killed Tangerine” almost perfectly mimics the halting structure of the Beatles’ “Come Together,” right?
If there was one thing people might have found fault with, it was that Everybody Loves a Happy Ending is a true album. You need to hear it as a collection of specific moments in specific spots because, individually, the songs aren’t as strong as Tears For Fears’ past offerings. Put together, however, it’s a great album.
That’s nothing to scoff at: A great album is something that’s become more and more rare, as groups struggle desperately to get a foothold in the industry with just a single song. Maybe some were turned off since it was also drawn more from the post-breakup style Roland Orzabal crafted for Tears For Fears. To me, there was just enough of Curt Smith’s psychedelic pop influence to keep it from getting as dry as the band’s material without him often did.
Regardless, there’s a hell of a lot of beauty in Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, and it’s a great tragedy that it has gone largely ignored.
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Here me now and believe me next week when I tell you I love this album- well, big chunks of it. You and I have some similar musical timelines and an unhealthy love for Def Leppard (even to this day). That’s another day on Donahue.
“Closest Thing To Heaven” belongs in the Top 5-10 things they’ve ever done. I love Curt Smith’s plodding bass line that feels just a half-click behind the beat. It’s so “them!” So much of this record is so good and it makes me happy listening to it.
I also defiantly defend the two Roland-TFF LPs. ‘Elemental’ got a ridiculous number of spins in my car and I still dust it and ‘Raoul’ off from time-to-time.
Great work as always, Tom.
We obviously agree, Josh. And as much as I like this album, I’ve found that the recently “expanded” version of Raoul has ascended to possibly my favorite TfF album. With those 7 (!) b-sides/bonus tracks in place, it feels like an epic concept album rather than just a bunch of songs. How it rates so low, I don’t know.
I recently bought the expanded edition and quite like the additions. I’m still partial to ‘Elemental’ but both Roland-TFF albums were excellent. They’re better together but those albums are unfairly dismissed.
The bonus tracks “Out of Control” and “Pullin’ A Cloud” are also great. Out of Control has grown to be a fave song of mine. Amazing vocals from Roland Orzabal.