Tears for Fears' "Shout" starts a 3-week run at #1 in 1985


August 3, 1985 – The Republic of America, God Help Us All.

Well, damn it, here we are. Another blistering August, the asphalt shimmering like a drunkard’s hallucination, and what do we find? The airwaves, those invisible tendrils of corporate-controlled auditory narcotics, have been utterly dominated by two pale, earnest lads from Bath. Yes, you heard me right, you quivering masses of Reaganomics and consumer fever dreams: Tears for Fears. And their song, "Shout," has just ripped its way to the top of the U.S. singles chart, where it will squat, unmoving, like some mystical, minimalist kraken for the next three agonizing, glorious weeks.

This ain't no soft-focus, saccharine pop ballad, mind you. This is a primal scream. A guttural demand for… well, for something. Roland Orzabal, looking like a man perpetually on the verge of either a nervous breakdown or a grand revelation, bellows "Shout! Shout! Let it all out!" And the damn nation is obeying. They're letting it all out, alright. The pent-up angst of suburban conformity, the creeping paranoia of the Cold War, the nagging suspicion that the American Dream was just a particularly cruel acid trip – it's all bubbling to the surface, and Tears for Fears has provided the sonic conduit.


I saw the video, of course. Couldn't avoid it. MTV, that flickering cathode-ray beast, shoves it down your throat like a warm beer in a roadside ditch. Orzabal and Curt Smith, framed against some desolate, windswept rock formation, looking like they'd just escaped from a very stylish asylum. There's a certain genius to it, I'll admit. No dancing girls, no gratuitous explosions, just two men, a hell of a guitar solo, and a synthesizer riff that drills directly into your medulla oblongata. It's almost too clean for this era of excess, yet it cuts through the malarkey like a straight razor through warm butter.

And the message? "Shout!" It's a call to arms, a sonic Molotov cocktail hurled at the prevailing apathy. People are listening. Or at least, they’re buying the damn record. They’re driving their Ford Tempos to the shopping malls, those temples of synthetic desire, and they’re plunking down their hard-earned dollars for this single, this undeniable force.


What does it mean, you ask? What plunge into the abyss, or glorious awakening, does this signify? Are we witnessing the dawn of a new, angsty consciousness, or merely another fleeting spasm of commercial success? Perhaps it's both. The music industry, that insatiable leviathan, cares not for the soul, only for the sale. But sometimes, just sometimes, a genuine tremor of something real slips through the cracks, something that resonates with the collective unease, something that makes you want to drive a thousand miles with the windows down, screaming into the void, and there's nothing The Man can do to claw it back.

So crank it up, you pathetic NPCs! Let the neighbors complain! Let the dogs howl! Because for the next three weeks, the undisputed sound of America will be the insistent, pounding, utterly-unhinged demand to SHOUT! And if you don't feel the urge to join in, well, then you're already dead. Just a matter of time before the vultures descend. Don't say I didn't warn you. The scumbags are coming. And Tears for Fears is providing the soundtrack.

Location: Bath, UK

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