2. Tears For FearsTears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92)

This is again very much a childhood pick. I was listening to this CD cover to cover non-stop until maybe the age of 12 and not until I was in my 20s did I realise it was actually a Greatest Hits compilation of their first three albums rather than just one studio record. It sounds like an album though to me, and obviously I’ve heard it so many times that I’m going to say that, but I just can’t imagine these tracks in any other order. Now when I listen to the three albums separately, it’s very clear why these were the singles. Sure, I could have just picked one of their actual albums, but I’ve still got the CD copy of this and it really just does something for me. I don’t even really know what they’ve done since those albums, though they had a record out fairly recently that I know Ceci [Corsano-Leopizzi, AKA CCL] plays a track off sometimes in their sets, and it’s really good.

I guess I could say ‘Shout’ as an individual song was also quite an early oddball influence on my music taste because they’re a stadium band, but ‘Shout’ is basically an industrial track. It has a sonic palette that you wouldn’t normally hear in music that mainstream and the songwriting in general is a lot more nuanced and interesting than what you might get from a lot of huge stadium and pop bands of that era. My Dad has a photo hanging up on the wall of his study of me and him singing ‘Shout’ at his office karaoke party in 1993 I think. I’m six years old, wearing double denim, looking at this really huge CRT monitor on the floor!