Mothers Talk

There's something about *Mothers Talk* that invites you to pay attention from the very first second. It's not just the energy it unleashes, but how it's constructed. For example, the strings you hear at the beginning don't come from an orchestra, but were sampled from a Barry Manilow record. And the drum beat that sustains the song, which some compare to the one in Weather Report's "Teen Town," is an early example of how Tears for Fears began to play with *sampling* in their compositions, something they also explored on their B-side, *Empire Building*. The lyrics, for their part, are inspired by two ideas: a common phrase mothers tell their children about making faces and the anti-nuclear comic book *When the Wind Blows*.

This song was a turning point for Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith. Written in 1983, the idea was for it to serve as a preview of their second album, *Songs from the Big Chair*, which was released in 1985. Although Orzabal acknowledges that *Mothers Talk* propelled them in a new creative direction, he himself confesses not to be a big fan of the track. However, producer Chris Hughes, who also worked on the album, considers it fundamental to the band's development. The first recording of the song, made in early 1984 with another producer, did not convince the record company, so Hughes returned to oversee a new version that was eventually released as a single in August 1984. In the United States, the song had a different trajectory; it was released as the fourth and final single from *Songs from the Big Chair* in April 1986, reaching number 27 on the *Billboard Hot 100*. This American version, although labeled a "remix," was actually a complete re-recording, mixed by Bob Clearmountain.