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This was the first Tears For Fears single in nearly 4 years and has been described as a "towering and sophisticated pop song with some very deliberate Beatleisms"... It raced into the Top 10 on release, finally peaking at No. 5 on 10th September 1989.I think Now 16 is the most expensive one I've ever bought, costing me the princely sum of £2 in the PDSA shop last winter. I allowed myself that sort of spend because I also got a nice Thinsulate hat for a bargain price at the same time. It's a handsome vinyl LP, one of my favourite Now covers in fact, although I will have to try and remember to include the extra tracks that are only on the CD version. Now afficionados will also know the other thing that distinguishes 16 from every other album in the series, but I won't spoil it just yet.
Anyway, we kick off with the only ever Now appearance for one of the biggest bands of the first half of the 1980s. One can presume that contractual issues kept the likes of 'Shout' and 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World' off earlier volumes, and after this big comeback hit they struggled somewhat, never troubling the Top 10 again. As the release schedule suggests, the Seeds Of Love album whence this came had a rather troubled gestation, with the founding duo getting through countless musicians (including three different drummers) and several studios to try and get what they wanted. Rarely are classics forged in such circumstances, although it must be said that their effort was rewarded with a somewhat lusher and more full-bodied sound than their earlier work - the original of 'Mad World' does sound decidedly cheap and tinny nowadays. Even so, this is such an obvious attempt at a Beatles pastiche that even I noticed when I was 11; and unfortunately it sounds like the work of people who've never really listened to the Beatles but have heard other people describe them.
It's true that there are several superficial touches that immediately call Magical Mystery Tour to mind: the trumpet solo that sounds like 'Penny Lane', the ostinato reminiscent of 'I Am The Walrus', the big cello section and a fair impersonation of Ringo's "backwards" drum fills, for instance. But at the same time, there's no way anyone could mistake this for the real deal: of course this is partly because of Roland Orzabal's voice (which I admit I've never liked) and partly because of the lyric which tries to encompass both Summer-Of-Love positivity and Lennonesque cynicism and sarcasm. That's a very tough balance to strike and it doesn't really come off here. Incidentally, I once read in an American newspaper that the line "kick out the Style, bring back the Jam" was a critique of Paul Weller (they didn't mention the MC5 parallel) and if true this is obviously anachronistic to 1967 as well as being the opposite of what you'd expect TFF to think. The most crucial mistake, though, is that this lacks the economy of the best Beatles work: even the 7" edit we get here clocks in at about 5:40, which is not something John, Paul, George, Ringo and George Martin would have countenanced at their peak (aside from the extended outro to 'Hey Jude', and even that was done to make a point). There's a strong sense that production has been ladled onto this track rather than being integral to it, and the basic performance isn't really as tight as it could have been, a little too blatantly the product of high-tech eighties studios and click-tracks.
I don't want to sound like this is a really bad record, because it isn't, and it's certainly one of the best things they ever did together (also one of the last, until a reunion in the mid-2000s); it's just that when it's so obvious what they were aiming for, it's hard to ignore how far they missed. 'Sowing The Seeds Of Love' sounds more like a precursor to the self-consciously anthemic Oasis songs than a throwback to Sgt. Pepper.
Available on: Mad World: The Collection
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