“Sowing the Seeds of Love” by Tears for Fears

"Sowing the Seeds of Love" was the first single from Tears for Fears' third album, The Seeds of Love, in 1989, and it's the sound of the band throwing open every window in the studio. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith wrote it together, David Bascombe produced it, and Ian Stanley's Hammond organ swirls through a song that keeps changing clothes: stately one minute, bouncing and psychedelic the next, with a big, sing-along chorus that sounds as if it has marching bands and flower power on its mind.

It's grand, ambitious pop rock, lush to the point of excess and proud of it. That ambition paid off. The song topped the RPM chart in Canada and went top 10 in Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and the UK. In America it reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, the fourth and last of their top-10 hits there, and it went all the way to number one on both the Modern Rock chart and the Cash Box Top 100.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.