APRIL 2020
This song has been lucky enough to have been revitalized in the 2000’s in a very positive and enjoyable way.
Who doesn’t remember this scene from the Official Video for the 1983 Tears for Fears song, Mad World?
If you’ve seen it, and heard it, you’ll recall that the tempo is very fast. Half the time I couldn’t quite catch all of the words!
In the 80’s, British band Tears for Fears was insanely popular here in…….let’s just say North America. Their music genre was “Alternative/Indie”, which automatically made very teenager and college student want to listen to it and buy the album. This made Tears for Fears extremely popular – in addition to their talented song-making!
Almost 20 years later, the movie industry made this song popular again, with a new generation of listeners. In 2001 the song was featured in the film “Donnie Darko”, sung by Gary Jules. This piano version slowed the tempo down and allowed the beautifully sad tones of Gary Jules’ voice to flow over the melody, haunting us forever. It’s very beautiful and a 2006 video can easily be found on Youtube.
A few years later, an intriguing member of this next, younger generation performed his version of Mad World during Season 8 of American Idol.
Adam Lambert’s performance of the piano version of Mad World, in the style of Gary Jules, earned him a standing ovation by Simon Cowell and immortalized the song. That’s such an iconic picture of Adam Lambert with his stylized hair and black nails, isn’t it?
This picture of Adam Lambert was taken from the video uploaded to Youtube of him performing Mad World, a video which “went viral” with over 1 million views within 48 hours of being posted. (I looked at it today, and it was some insane amount like hundreds of millions lol)
However. The Youtube vid I am including today, is of the actual Curt Smith, on acoustic guitar, performing his own song, his version of Mad World. It was posted by Tory Birch in April 2020 – during pandemic – and has a little write up of how they are pleased to post this video of their “dear friend and his daughter Diva.” You’ll notice that it has over 6 million views!
Here is my uke version of Mad World, which I arranged in June/2020:
Whoa. OK That’s different. And new. I am just getting used to/familiarizng myself with WordPress’s new way of writing a blog post, so please forgive me if today’s post looks wonky. Ie. I have no idea what “preformatted” means, OR how it’s going to look…..so hopefully, as I continue posting and uploading content, things will improve.
Anyway, that’s it for today: hope you enjoy!
Cat's Ukulele Songs 