Tears For Fears - "Head Over Heels" - Top 40 Music on CD Forum

My 45 is Mercury 880 899-7, with a designation of "(Re-Mix)" on both the label and the picture sleeve, and "Remixed by Dave Bascombe" on the label. It sounds like Mercury was pulling out all the stops to make sure this was a hit.

The 45 has a printed time of 4:15, has an actual time of 4:15, starts at 95.0 BPM and ends at 94.9 BPM. It has a real, but very small, drift in tempo - nothing you'll hear, though.

The 45 versions on CD seem to use one of two analog transfers.

The first was on Tears Roll Down Greatest Hits 82-92 (1992), where it runs about 4:14 and actually seems to track into the next selection (the last 0.017 seconds has the opening sound from "Mad World"). It runs at 95.2 BPM throughout, with no drift.

There are a few CDs that use the same analog transfer as Tears Roll Down, including:

Priority's Rock Of The '80s Vol. 12 (1994; mastered a little too loud but doesn't sound too bad)
Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties Vol. 12 1985-1986 (1995; differently-EQ'd digital clone)
Mercury's The Millennium Collection (digital clone with additional compression/limiting - in a null test, drop the level of this by 3 dB and listen closely to hear exactly what the effect of a limiter is!)

All of the above fade to zero before that "Mad World" note kicks in.

The other mastering is for Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 15 (1995). Here, it runs 4:17, begins at 94.4 BPM and ends at 94.3 BPM. (Again, real, but nothing that you'll hear.) It's about 0.7% slower than the true 45, which you can hear in a side-by-side test, but may not be immediately obvious to you out of context, like hearing it on the radio. FYI, there was a New York radio station (WPLJ) that used to pitch their music up by 2%, and you can definitely hear a 2% change, even out of context.

There's a differently EQ'd digital clone of Just Can't Get Enough on Time-Life's 2-CD Modern Rock Vol. 9 Mid-'80s (2000).

The sound is very good on both the Rhino disc and Tears Roll Down, but I give a tiny nod to the Rhino disc for having the tail of the fade extend a fraction of a second longer.

If you're a stickler, you can use Audacity to increase the speed of the Rhino disc by 0.7% to match the true 45.

As for the LP version, you're probably aware that the original '80s era Songs From The Big Chair (the "atomic" design) has its left and right channels swapped.

Edited by crapfromthepast