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Kalaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fisher and this is the
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Hit Maker Chronicles. Today we're launching something special, a countdown
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of the top ten best cover songs of all time,
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as voted by the staff here at Kalaroga Shark Media.
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These aren't just covers that charted well. These are covers
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that transformed the original, that became more famous than the
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song they were covering, that changed how we think about
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what a cover can do. And we're starting at number
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ten with one of the most radical transformations in cover
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song history, Gary Jules's Mad World. Because here's the thing
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about Mad World. If you only know the Gary Jewles version,
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the slow, haunting, devastating piano ballad that soundtracked one of
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the most memorable scenes in Donnie Darko, you have no
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idea that the original was an upbeat nineteen eighty synth pop.
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So this is the story of how a forgotten cult
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film soundtrack cover became a UK Christmas number one and
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completely eclipsed the original. Let's start with Tears for Fears.
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In nineteen eighty two, Roland or Zibal and Kurt Smith
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were two young musicians from Bath, England, making synthesizer driven
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pop music that was simultaneously catchy and deeply introspective. Their
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debut album, The Herting, was inspired by primal scream therapy
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and dealt with childhood trauma, pain and emotional vulnerability. The
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album's lead single was Mad World Now. If you've only
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heard Gary Jules's version, you need to understand the Tears
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for Fears original sounds nothing like what you're expecting. It's
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driven by a bouncing synth bassline. There are programmed drums,
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multiple keyboard layers. It's up tempo, it's danceable. It has
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that distinctly early eighties British synthpop production that sits alongside
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Depeche Mode, The Human League and Duran Duran. The lyrics
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are dark. Roland or zebal Is singing about people going nowhere,
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familiar faces, worn out places, a world where people are
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going through the motions. But the music around those lyrics
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is energetic, almost cheerful in its melodic bounds. It's a
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song about depression wrapped in production that makes you want
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to dance. The single peaked at number three on the
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UK Singles Chart in November nineteen eighty two. It was
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a hit Tears for Fears were on their way to
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becoming one of the defining bands of the nineteen eighties,
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eventually achieving massive global success with Shout and Everybody Wants
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to Rule the World. But Mad World was their beginning,
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their first major chart entry, and for nearly twenty years,
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that synthpop version was the only version anyone knew. In
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January two thousand and one, a film called Donnie Darko
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premiered at the Site Dance Film Festival. It was directed
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by Richard Kelly, a first time filmmaker. It starred Jake
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Gillenhall as a troubled teenager who experiences bizarre visions involving
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a six foot tall demonic rabbit named Frank. The film
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was a dark, twisted exploration of time travel, mental illness, adolescence,
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and suburban alienation. It was weird, really weird, and when
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it was released theatrically in October two thousand and one,
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just a few weeks after September eleventh, it bombed. The
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distributor pulled it from most theaters within weeks. The movie
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made less than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars at
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the domestic box office. But here's where the story gets interesting.
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Donnie Darko became a cult phenomenon on DVD and through
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word of mouth. College students discovered it. Film nerds championed it.
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It became one of those movies people insisted you had
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to see, even though nobody had seen it in theaters,
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and one of the most memorable scenes in the film
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was the ending. The climactic sequence where Donnie sacrifices himself
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and the timeline resets is set to a slow, piano
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driven cover of Mad World performed by Michael Andrews, who
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composed the film's score, and featuring vocals by Gary Jewles.
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Gary Jewles was a California based singer songwriter. He'd released
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an album called Greetings from the Side in two thousand
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and one. He was talented but largely unknown. Michael Andrews
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was a composer and producer who'd worked with Gary on
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that album. When Andrews was hired to score Donnie Darko,
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he needed a song for the film's ending, something that
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captured the melancholy, the emotional devastation, the sense of a
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world stuck in cycles it can't escape. He thought of
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Mad World, but not the Tears for Fears version. He
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imagined it completely stripped down, just piano and voice, slow, minimal,
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All the production pulled away until only the emotional core remained.
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He called Gary Jewles to sing it. They recorded it
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for the film, and when Donnie Darko's ending played, with
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Gary's voice barely above a whisper, singing the dreams in
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which I'm dying are the best I've ever had over
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simple piano chords, it became the emotional crescendo of the
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entire movie. Everyone who saw Donnie Darko remembered that scene,
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that song, that moment. But in two thousand and one,
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when the film came out, you couldn't buy the song anywhere.
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It existed only in the film. As Donnie Darko built
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its cult following through two thousand and two and early
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two thousand and three, fans started asking where can we
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get that version of Mad World. The film's website received messages.
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Gary Jewles's website received messages. People were tracking down the
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Donnie Darko soundtrack, only to discover it didn't include the song,
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just Michael Andrews's instrumental score. The demand was real, and
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eventually someone listened. In the UK, there was a growing
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movement to get Mad World released as a proper single.
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The British public had embraced Donnie Darko even more enthusiastically
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than American audiences. The film had become a midnight movie
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phenomenon in London, and that cover of Mad World had
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become synonymous with the film's emotional impact. In December two
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thousand and three, nearly two years after Donny Darko's theatrical release,
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Mad World by Michael Andrews featuring Gary Jewles was officially
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released as a single in the UK. The timing was strategic.
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It was released as a potential Christmas number one. In
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the UK, the Christmas number one is a big deal.
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It's the single that tops the charts during the final
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week of the year, and historically it's been dominated by
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novelty songs, charity singles and massive pop stars. In two
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thousand and three, the expected Christmas number one was Maniac
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by Michael Sambello, a re release of the Flashdance soundtrack hit. Instead,
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Mad World debuted at number one on December twenty first,
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two thousand and three. It held the top spot through
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Christmas and into the new year. It became the first
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single to reach number one in the UK without any
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radio play It was entirely driven by word of mouth,
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bandmand and the emotional connection people felt to the Donnie
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Darko scene. The song sold over a million copies in
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the UK alone. It became one of the best selling
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singles of the decade in Britain and critically it introduced
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an entirely new generation to mad world, a generation that
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had no idea. It was a cover of a nineteen
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eighty two Tears for Fear song, So let's talk about
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what makes Gary Jules's version so powerful and why it
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completely overshadowed the original. First, the arrangement Michael Andrews stripp
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to weigh everything, no sense, no program drums, no layered production,
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just a piano playing simple chords and Gary Jeweles singing
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with minimal reverb right up close to the microphone. That
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minimalism forces you to hear the lyrics. In the Tears
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for Fears version, the dark lyrics are buried under bright production.
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You can dance to it without really processing what Roland
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Orzibal is saying. In Gary's version, you can't escape the words.
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All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn
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out faces, bright and early for the daily races, going
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nowhere going nowhere. That's not just melancholy, that's existential dread.
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That's the feeling of being trapped in a life you
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didn't choose, surrounded by people who are just going through
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the motions. And then the bridge. The dreams in which
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I'm dying are the best I've ever had. In the
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upbeat Tears for Fears version, that line is jarring. It's
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such a dark sentiment wrapped in cheerful music that your
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brain almost doesn't process it. In Gary Jules's version, it's devastating.
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It's a confession. It's someone telling you that death dreams
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feel better than waking life. Gary Jeules's vocal performance is
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what makes this cover transcendent. He's not a powerful singer.
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He's not doing vocal runs or showing off range. His
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voice is quiet, almost fragile. There's a weariness to it,
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a resignation. He sounds like someone who's given up, not
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in a dramatic way, but in a quiet, exhausted way,
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like someone who's been sad for so long that they've
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run out of energy to even perform sadness anymore. That's
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why the song works so well. At the end of
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Donnie Darko, Donnie has just sacrificed himself to reset the timeline,
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to undo everything. And as the camera shows us all
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the other characters waking up in the reset timeline, not
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remembering what happened, knowing what Donnie did for them, we
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hear this voice telling us that the world is mad,
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that people are going nowhere, that dreams of dying are
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the best we've got. It's bleak, It's honest. It's beautiful
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in its bleakness. So how did Tears for Fears feel
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about their upbeat, synthpop song being transformed into a slow,
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devastating ballad that became more famous than their original Roland Orzibal,
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the song's primary writer, was gracious about it. I think
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it's a great version, he said in interviews. He acknowledged
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that Gary Jewles had found something in the song that
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maybe wasn't fully realized in the original production, but he
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also pointed out something interesting. The Tears for Fears version
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was intentionally produced the way it was. They wanted the
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contrast between dark lyrics and bright music. That tension was
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the point. Gary Jules's version removes that tension. It makes
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the song unifically sad, and that works brilliantly. For what
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it is, but it's a fundamentally different artistic choice. Neither
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version is better. They're two completely different interpretations of the
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same set of lyrics. One is about the dissonance between
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how we feel and how we present ourselves. The other
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is about allowing the sadness to be fully present. Here's
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something fascinating about Mad World and the streaming era. Gary
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Jules's version has more streams than the Tears for Fears
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original on Spotify. As of twenty twenty six, the Gary
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Jewles version has accumulated hundreds of millions of streams. The
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Tears for Fears original has significantly fewer. That means there
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are millions of people who know Mad World only as
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the slow, sad piano ballad from Donnie Darko. They have
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no idea it was originally an eighty synth pop song,
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and when those people discover the Tears for Fears original,
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their reaction is usually shock, Wait, this is the original.
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This sounds nothing like the Gary Jewles version. That's the
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power of a transformative cover. It doesn't just reinterpret the song,
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It fundamentally changes what the song means in popular culture.
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Mad World opened doors for other artists to radically reinterpret covers.
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It proved that you could take a well known song
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and strip it down to its emotional core, changing everything
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about the arrangement while keeping the lyrics and melody intact.
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You can hear its influence in countless covers that followed, slow, minimal,
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piano based reinterpretations of up tempo pop songs. Damian Rice
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covering Britney Spears, the Civil Wars covering Billy Jean, the
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entire genre of sad covers of pop songs owes something
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to what Michael Andrews and Gary Jeweles did with Mad World.
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The song also cemented Donnie Darko's status as a cult classic.
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The film and the song are now inseparable. You can't
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watch that ending without hearing Gary's voice. You can't hear
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that cover without thinking of Jake Gillenhall's face as the
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timeline resets. So why does Mad World earn the number
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ten spot on our countdown of the best cover songs
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of All time? Because it's the perfect example of a
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cover that completely transforms the original while still honoring it.
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Gary Jewles and Michael Andrews didn't try to compete with
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Tears for Fears version. They created something entirely different, because
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it proved that a cover from a cult film soundtrack
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could become a massive commercial success two years after the
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film's release, driven entirely by fandomand because it became more
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culturally significant than the original, introducing a new generation to
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a song they would have never discovered otherwise, And because
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it showed that sometimes the best way to cover a
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song is to strip away everything that made the original
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work and find something new underneath. The Tears for Fears
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version of Mad World is a great song about the
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tension between how we feel and how we present ourselves.
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Gary Jewles's version is a great song about accepting that
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the world is mad and we're all stuck in it together.
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Same lyrics, same melody, completely different songs. That's the power
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of a truly great cover, and that's why Mad World
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by Gary Jewles is number ten on our countdown. This
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is Garrett Fischer and This is the Hit Maker Chronicles
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join us next Sunday for number nine on our countdown
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of the top ten best cover songs of all time.