Tears For Fears are like an onion: just when I think I understand their whole situation, I peel back another layer to find something new. Also, they sometimes make me cry. (I once walked around my neighborhood listening to “The Working Hour” on repeat one evening in peak pandemic times just to feel the EMOTION.) “Mad World,” however, was only barely on my radar. Like many millennials, I was introduced to the song via the Donnie Darko soundtrack, but it took me far too long to learn that even that version is a cover of the Tears For Fears original.
(I would also like to talk about how this Donnie Darko scene set to another Tears For Fears song, “Head Over Heels,” is one of the best soundtracked movie scenes ever. Or perhaps how I want to learn the entire Sparkle Motion dance to Duran Duran’s “Notorious,” but I don’t know what choreography we’re missing when it cuts between that and the arson. But at least one of those topics is better left to another post.)
So imagine my surprise when one lazy Friday night, on my couch with a cocktail in hand, browsing some synthpop section of YouTube, I encountered one of the best dance breaks ever hiding in the original “Mad World” video.
Here’s the whole video if you want to jump right in, but keep reading if you just want to know about the juicy dance parts:
First off, aren’t you already sold by that thumbnail alone? Curt Smith is trapped in a glass case of emotion and is rocking some swoopy curly bangs. (Spoiler alert: he is also rocking some kind of tail/skinny mullet in the back.)
So I’m getting into this English countryside depression vibe, and then I get to minute 1:45 and I’m like… hold up, what’s happening on the dock? Is that other Tears For Fears singer Roland Orzabal, fist-pumping and freestyling alone to the water while wearing fingerless gloves? Why YES IT IS:
I love how even the camera knows it. It completely pans away from Curt’s tortured singing in an empty room like, “Hold up, what’s going on outside?”
But then just when I had gotten over that joyous surprise, at minute 2:20 I was greeted with this full, backlit, Roland dance solo:
The elbows! The hips! The dramatic slo-mo throwing of a ball first!
This is how I want to enter every room!
This is how I want to exit every room!
This is level of confidence I want to broadcast to the world at all times!!
As soon as I finished watching this video, I downed my cocktail and immediately watched it three more times. I then got to squeal with glee when my boyfriend, Lucas, got home and I learned that he had never seen it, so I watched it three more times with him.
It is essential that you watch those clips with the music to get the full experience, but if you just need a lil Roland hit, I’ve made you some gifs:
I wanted to know everything about this dance, and what inspired such passion in Roland’s moves, but so far I’ve only been able to find this one quote from him:
I'd come up with this dance for it and used to do it a lot in the studio, so the record company told me I had to do it in the video, since Curt was singing and there was nothing else for me to do. So there I was, stuck by this lake doing my flying wombat impersonation, but it worked.
It’s worth reading this whole (short) Guardian article about the making of the song, which—surprise!—came out of Roland’s teenage feelings of depression and alienation. We also learn this fun tidbit from Curt:
When we made the video in a country estate on the cheap, we bussed all our friends and family up from Bath and had a fun day. The woman who's having the birthday party in the video is my mum.
That brief birthday party scene is the weirdest part of this video for me, but if it meant they all got to have a big party, then I guess it was worth it. The flying wombat dance knocks the rest out of the park though.
Ever since I first showed this video to Lucas, we have become a little obsessed with wanting to memorize this dance solo. It looks so easy, right? And yet, despite recording the video, isolating that solo, slowing it down to half speed, and reversing the image so it’s easier to mirror his moves (yeah we’re not messing around), it is still SO hard to learn. I think it’s because we lack Roland’s attitude, his casual confidence, and his ability to move his hips just right. Maybe we also need the right fingerless gloves?
If any dance instructors out there want to help us out, please get in touch. It is our dream to bust this out at a party or a wedding reception or maybe just a dock in the English countryside.
BONUS: I’m trying out this whole Substack Notes thing. It is basically Twitter without ads or a megalomaniac at the helm. I’m bad at participating in social media (which Notes basically is even though it’s pretending not to be), but I’ll be throwing some thoughts about writing and dance moves out there as much as I can. Check it out HERE.
See you next month with some more fierce moves!
Love and jazz hands,
Molly