Placebo Share Cover of Tears For Fears 'Shout'

Placebo have shared a cover of Tears For Fears Shout. The UK alt-rockers lean into their industrial influences, transforming Shout from an 80s pop floor-filler into a darker, more ominous offering. 

Brian Molko revealed the inspiration for the cover, explaining that the song has always held a special place for him "In the mid-1980s when I was a teenager, ‘Shout’ by Tears For Fears served as part of my political awakening. Today I realise that it could be about anything that angers or frustrates a person. For me it’s a call to arms for self-expression, speaking one’s own truth." 

"As I watched my son’s generation become more politicised, and the world continue to crumble around us, I wanted to offer him & his contemporaries a protest anthem, since it appears that it is mostly them who still have the capacity to save us from ourselves. 'Shout's' essence as a song is its simplicity, it feels very natural to engage directly with it."

 “This rallying cry against apathy will hopefully provide a context for those who care to express their anger. Or simply offer some kind of catharsis. It certainly still does both for me.”

Shout appears on Tears For Fears' 1985 album Songs From The Big Chair.

Placebo have a knack for making songs their own, having released a much-loved cover of Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill on their 2003 album Sleeping With Ghosts. 

Placebo released their long-awaited eighth studio album Never Let Me Go in March. Never Let  Me Go channels all their skill as songwriters and sound-makers into music that satisfies their near-brutal appetite for self-expression, but also seeks a furious relevance with the early-’20s world we all find ourselves in – crawling out of the pandemic into a landscape of intolerance, division, tech-saturation and imminent eco-catastrophe. As such, the 2021-model Placebo are the diametric opposite of mid-career complacency, tackling both global issues and their own creative demands head-on. The option to sit back and coast on former glories was there on a plate for them when they were last among us circa 2016-18.