Hot Tips For The Boys

Tears for Fears “Break It Down Again”

“Break It Down Again” was released in 1993 and was a solid radio hit, which is sorta surprising in that the aesthetic of the song is extremely un-1993, the point at which post-Nirvana “alternative” sounds had become entirely dominant in the mainstream. It’s one of the last songs to make it out of that fascinating bubble of pop history that I explored in this playlist – the ‘80s mutating into a glossy, self-consciously classy new ‘90s sound that ends up entirely abandoned within a couple years as the major aesthetics of the era are defined by a cohort of artists who favored more raw styles of rock, pop, and hip-hop.

Tears for Fears, a defining band of the ‘80s, showed up a bit late to the ‘90s party partly because Roland Orzabol had become a studio perfectionist in the late ‘80s but mostly because the band was derailed by his acrimonious split with band co-founder Curt Smith. “Break It Down Again” and the rest of the Elemental album sounds like it would have fit right in with the zeitgeist of 1990 or 1991, but in 1993 it’s already a throwback in the midst of a rock scene centered on records like In Utero, Siamese Dream, Vs., and Pablo Honey. Some of Tears for Fears ‘80s contemporaries had at this point successfully reinvented themselves with very ‘90s palettes – U2, Depeche Mode, R.E.M., The Cure – but Orzabol made no such concessions. It’s not clear to me whether this was out of fidelity to a specific artistic vision or because the record was in the works for so long that there was no way to update the sound of it without starting from scratch. Probably a little of both.

“Break It Down Again” is maximalist and bombastic, and absolutely jammed full of ideas. Orzabol was no stranger to this approach – if anything, the band’s 1989 hit “Sowing the Seeds of Love” is twice as dense – but the relavitely compact structure of this composition makes the swerves from martial political fanfare to hyperbolic synthesized orchestral hits to smooth layered harmonies feel a bit dizzying. Orzabol gets away with his most highbrow notions and acrobatic feats of arrangement because he’s so gifted with melody, and “Break It Down Again” is so stacked with ear-catching hooks that it feels like it could tip over and crash like a Jenga tower at some points.

The lyrics are just as packed as the composition, to the point that each iteration of the chorus has a new set of lyrics attached to the melody. Orzabol approaches the idea of “breaking it down” from multiple angles: dissolution of both personal relationships and nation states, the deconstruction of masculinity, the erosion of emotional walls and the things that keep you from finding your inner truths, the eventual decay of all things. The song embraces the concept of entropy – not so much in the sense of awaiting oblivion, but in that the end of things allow for new beginnings. The lyrics convey an intriguing blend of cynicism and optimism, to the point that he seems to be begging for destruction as an impetus to change. I don’t know if Orazabol intended this song to espouse accelerationism, but it certainly comes off that way.

Buy it from Amazon.