The Worldwide Fame of the Album Songs from the Big Chair

Tears for Fears went on a different direction in the early 1984 as they started to work with a new producer, Jeremy Green, on their new single “Mothers Talk”. But the band were eventually unsatisfied with the outcome and so producer Chris Hughes was brought back into the fold and the “Mothers Talk” single reproduced for release in August 1984. A distinct exit from their previous works, the single became a Top 20 hit in the UK, but it was the follow-up single “Shout” (released in the UK in November 1984) that was the real start of the band’s international fame.

This Top 5 hit gave way for their second album, Songs from the Big Chair (released in February 1985), which came in the UK album chart at no.2 and stayed in the higher level of the chart for the next 12 months. They did away with the mostly synth-pop feel of the first album, as an alternative intensifying into a more stylish sound that became the band’s stylistic hallmark. Anchored around the creative hub of producer Hughes, Stanley and Orzabal, the new Tears for Fears sound helped to boost Songs from the Big Chair into becoming one of the year’s biggest global sellers, finally being certified triple-platinum in the UK and quintuple-platinum in the U.S. (where it remained the #1 album for five weeks in the summer of 1985).

The success of the album was in combination to the collection of hit singles it yielded: “Mothers Talk” (rerecorded yet again for its US release in 1986), “Shout” (#4 UK, #1 in the U.S., Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, etc., and a huge hit in other countries, actually one of the biggest of the 1980s), “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, (their biggest UK and Irish hit at #2 and another #1 in the U.S. and in Canada), “Head over Heels” (UK #12, US #3, Ireland #5, Canada #8) and “I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)” (UK #23 and Ireland #10). Some territories even saw the release of limited edition 10″ singles for these hits, and a selection of double packs and picture discs in addition to the regular 7″ and 12″ formats.

Next to the album’s release, the band went on a world tour that lasted most of the year. Throughout this tour, Orzabal and Smith discovered an American female singer/pianist, Oleta Adams, who was performing in a Kansas City, Missouri hotel bar, and whom they invited to collaborate on their next album.

The title of the album was inspired by the book and television miniseries Sybil, the chronicle of a woman with multiple personality disorder who sought sanctuary in the “big chair” of her analyst, Orzabal and Smith stating that they felt each of the album’s songs had a distinctive personality of its own. The band had a song entitled “The Big Chair” which was released as the B-side to “Shout” but was not included on the album. They released as well a video collection/documentary entitled Scenes from the Big Chair the same year, while their first two earliest singles were re-released, both reaching the UK Top 75.

After finishing the quite long and very tiring Big Chair world tour in 1986, Manny Elias left the group. Orzabal and Stanley then worked together on a side project named “Mancrab”, releasing a single, “Fish for Life”, which was written for the soundtrack of the film The Karate Kid, Part II. The track was written and produced by Orzabal and Stanley, which featured vocals by US singer/dancer Eddie Thomas.