Tears For Fears: Mad World Meaning
Song Released: 1982
Covered By: Gary Jules (2003), Jasmine Thompson (2013), Taylor John Williams (2014)
Mad World Lyrics
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my...
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Just look at people's faces on the London Underground during rush hour and you can sense the truths conveyed in this song. We are merely defecating and suffering animals living out our mortal and insignificant lives in a meaningless and pitilessly indifferent universe.
The true ramifications of accepting this are too painful and unbearable for most people to bear. I interpret this song pretty much exactly how Curt from Tears for Fears described it because I've experienced existential despair since I was a child and thus the song spoke to me directly.
Now, as a man in my mid-thirties, I am an antinatalist. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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I really like this song (even more when Adam Lambert sings it) even though it is very sad. I think the song is about how someone can feel forgotten so that person feels like there is no more point in living hence the part "the dreams in which i'm dying are the best i ever had."
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I don't have anything to add to this. Just wanted to say a lot of these analysis were so right on to me. This song has always hit me emotionally because I relate so much to it. But reading the very detailed explanations just made me tear up a little. Made me think about how I felt for most all of my childhood; the emptiness, constant suicidal thoughts and daydreams, feeling of a pointless existence, social irrevelance, holding it in, etc. And I still feel that way sometimes. I don't think I've related so much to a song as I do this one...unfortunately. But a beautiful song.
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I like many interpretations so far but this song must also be analyzed in context. If you are in your teens or early 20s, please go beyond the JDarko movie and listen to other Tears for Fears songs like "Sowing the seeds of love", "Woman in chains" etc etc. They are elegantly questionning the system and Mad World is among their best.
The character or viewer (that often reapears in their songs) is disgusted to see humans reduced to lab rats running around in circles. The viewer wants to see beyond this awful fate but feels alone, so life seems to be a scham and the worst part is that the others know this as well yet are "drinking down their tears" rather than doing something about it.
As Socrates said "an unexamined life is not worth living". The viewer feels so alone in his thoughts with these "worn out faces" that if you examine life all by yourself too long you will conclude that we live in a Mad World, so you might as well die and this thought is kind of funny and kind of sad...because you were made to live. -
I believe most people on here have no CONCEPT of real meaning!. But this is precisely what this song is about.
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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I feel that he is just looking for a mental way out of his repetitive life.
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Personally I feel that this song is about the one point in a teen/adult's life around 17 or 18 when they finally realize that they are only one in 6.5 billion. a time when you realize that you will most likely stay were you end up permanently and that you will see the same thing everyday. In short the teen turning into an adult and being thrown into society. Some realize this before others, it can have an extremely depressing effect on a young mind, some will refuse to accept this reality. This song explains a persons view of the world at this life stage. all in all this is one of the few songs that never age in my mind nor does it mis-interpret any of my ideas, this is a personal favorite of mine out of all the music I've listened to.
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I believe that this song is about the author’s perspective of the world. He thinks that the world is full of sorrow and anguish, as I interpreted from “Their tears are filling up their glasses.” He also thinks that people in general have repetitive lives, everything is the same, day after day. I interpreted this from the lines “When people run in circles,” and “Bright and early for their daily races.” He also said “All around me are familiar faces/Worn out places, worn out faces,” which made me think that he was saying that everyone works until the day they die. “Familiar faces” is what he means as everyone having the same facial expression, of bleak and nothingness. “Worn out places” also means that not only are they physically broken down, but also mentally, from nothing but anguish in their lives. “Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow,” and “I find it kind of funny/I find it kind of sad,” means that he feels pain for the world. By “I find it kind of funny,” he didn’t mean it to be as a joke, but as an “ironic funny,” where life is supposed to be a gift, but people take it for granted. Also, people have very high expectations for others, which limits people’s free spirit and ideas, as “Made to feel the way that every child should/Sit and listen, sit and listen,” said. In this case, children are being told to be almost like “mini-adults,” which is against a child’s nature. The author also asks for guidance through life, asking “Hello teacher, tell me, what’s my lesson?” The “teacher” is God, and “lesson” is him asking for a teaching of life. So, I guess, the song’s overall meaning is that a person’s everyday, “normal” life is terrible in “nature’s normal” view. We have twisted our roles in life to be that of work and labor, and nothing more, in the author’s eyes.
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Well I find this song to be very moving, because it comes from within. Its not a half-assed song, it is what he feels and how he interprets the world. That is the true meaning of the song. This "going round in circles" is life, the "feeling the way every child should" is ignorance of happenings in the world, the "dreams in which Im dying are the best I've ever had" reffers to what he wants to happen, he wants to die. Obviously he is concidering suicide at some point. Its all about his life, the way he lived, and lives, and how he wants it all to end. Listen closer and you will understand. Put yourself in his shoes. Just imagine, enlargene your world
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Short and Simple:
This song is about the hardship and emotional strain of just "going through the motions" in life. It's about how we all just seem to be living lives that aren't particularly interesting and how it is really hard to feel unique at all. When it talks of childrens birthday being the day they "feel good." It's because those are the days..just once a year..that they feel special and different from everyone else. It's really sad if you think about it for a while. -
i really like this song, finally one that's about something other than relationships
it's meaning is worded very loosely, it lets you interpret it yourself
this is what i got from it:
everyday is the same, we wake up, emotionless drones, as we follow our daily routines, everything is planned even our feelings, we all conform, try to fit in with everyone else.
it all seems really pointless to him, as he believes dying would be better than this empty life, or maybe because it;d be something new, a way to escape the repetition. there'll only ever be today, never a tomorrow. as children, we're taught to sit and listen, the way all children should, to feel happy on our birthday, it just shows how controlled we are, living with one track minds, wanting more but never going for it. always going around in circles makes it a very, very mad world. -
This song is about youth pain, isolation, and loneliness leading to a deep depression. This song resonates deeply with me because it perfectly expresses the pain in my childhood.
Ultimately, when you feel like you are an isolated outcast, you lose a sense of social connection to those around you.
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
In these lines, he sees his family and those around him a "familiar faces" but everything is worn out in that he no longer feels a connection because they are worn out. All he sees are busy people with other things to do besides care about him.
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Again, he sees everything around him and the business as meaningless because with no sense of connection and a feeling of isolation, everything begins to feel meaningless.
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
I interpret "glasses" in this line to mean eyeglasses. He feels that everyone must be miserable becauase life is so miserable. He is projecting his pain on those around him. Pain and numbness.
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
This leads into the next line. He wants the pain to go away and is absolutely hopeless "no tomorrow, no tomorrow"
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
This goes right to the heart of the matter. His life is so sad and alone that he would rather die and he dreams about dying. This seems like the only power he has over his life and his pain...the ability to end it.
I find it hard to tell you
'Cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World
This reiterates that life is meaningless when you don't feel loved and connected. When you feel isolated.
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
As he wallows in his pain he looks for the few moments when he feels something else, like on his birthday when people finally might notice him.
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
At school, he doesn't interact with his peers, but "sits and listens" and so feels socially isolated.
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
This is the ultimate vulnerability. I was desparately shy and we moved frequently. As someone who was different and shy, you knew the first day was the beginning of the torment.
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me
Teachers frequently overlook bullying and children in emotional distress. The teacher could help him but abandons him like everyone else.
The song describes his pain, but it is also helps those who don't experience themselves to understand. It is a warning to take notice of the shy, bullied child and to do something. Being socially isolated cause lasting harm. I happened to find ways to adapt to my shyness and have overcome these difficult years and thoughts of suicide so there is hope! -
I can't speak for the whole world, but I think that as this is a song probably about a young person, the world gives more of a damn about people going through this phase in life than when I was growing up (in school), etc. I graduated in 1980, and authority really didn't give much of a damn about these things. I do believe the world,though ever so gradually, is growing up.
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