Bright and early for the daily races

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

22/05/83 : The Hurting - Tears For Fears



Oooh - I've not listened to this in a bit, but I remember liking it a lot, so am looking forward to it.

And yeah, 'twas good, with "Mad World", "Pale Shelter", "Watch Me Bleed" and "Change" being the high points for me, but it's got a pretty good quality level throughout.  Somehow the songs manage to be both upbeat and downbeat at the same time - except for the last two tracks, which are pretty downbeat (but in a good way).  I think all hangs together as an album pretty well with enough variety between the tracks and it has a good album cover (even if it is one of those that looks terrible in my blog due the white background).  And, most important, I OWN IT!!  10/32.

We're at an all time low chart position of #9 this week - on its 11th week out of a 32 week run.  It then had SIX more runs (including 3 runs taking up 31 weeks of 1985) before disappearing finally in 2013 (which was the 30th anniversary edition) - it's had more stamina than most we've seen from this year.  Above it were - hmm, I think we need to keep it to the top 5 otherwise this might get out of control as time goes on - Michael, Spandau, Iron Maiden (new entry), David and Heaven 17.  And I also need to mention the other new entry in the top 10 which is Bob at #8 - the next one down is The Creatures at #18 and they're a band that never cross my mind these days, I can tell you!

Wikipedia has more than I was expecting (118 milliPeppers) which tells me the songs were inspired by the childhood traumas of Roland Orzabal and the primal theories of Arthur Janov.  But you knew that, right?  I actually didn't know that Roland wrote all the songs - I'd assumed it was more of a balanced partnership.  Interestingly, the album received mixed reviews at the time, but has become much more highly regarded over time - it's been sampled by Kanye, The Weeknd and Drake which, no matter what you think of them all, is an impressive combo.  Commercially, it only really did well over here, but did get to #9 in Canada (which isn't a country we mention often - I guess they're overshadowed by their noisy neighbours!).

"Customers also listened to" Talk Talk, A Flock Of Seagulls, Level 42 and Howard Jones - fine 80s names, some of whom are still going to this day.  As are Tears For Fears, with their latest album being very well received in February this year - and I'm tempted to check it out now.  I was pleased to revisit this though - I think it's an oldie and a goodie.

15/05/83 - 1983?  1953 more like...
29/05/83 - In which I write a lot about an album I don't care for

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