Mad World (Tears for Fears cover)

The speaker is obviously viewing the world as an outsider. The first and final stanzas mainly discuss how everyone in the world seems so shut out of life itself as they are going through it with "worn out faces" with "no expression." The speaker perceives these people to be "going nowhere" because their goals in every day life are wrong in his point of view.

The second stanza is about his feelings for this mad world, which he does not wish to continue being a part of, if you would even consider him a part of it in the first place. Again, he sees these people just running around in circles, with nothing truly reached in the end.

The birthday and school references in the third stanza are examples as to how people are phased out and are no longer "living" and are instead just going through the motions. Every child just waits until they get to feel special for their birthday which is a very dark concept as it implies children do not very often feel as though they are special, or are highly valued, until it is their special day to be. Just as children do not feel special, the adults do not treat them as special. His teacher would look straight through him, as instead of getting to know his student, he runs through the motions as he would any regular student, rather than creating any bond between him as the teacher and the speaker as a student.

The speaker is very obviously stating that there is something wrong with how people are living and that they are not truly reaching any valuable goals. I believe this could be interpreted in many different ways and this is also why this song is so great; people can form connections to the song with very different interpretations of it.

One example that I believe fits best is that the speaker is speaking of the corporate world. Everyone is "racing" to get to the top, be the richest, and earn the most money. The speaker would perceive this as a mad world as money is completely extrinsic and does not help you achieve anything intrinsically meaningful. We could then see the teacher's lack of enthusiasm to help the speaker as a child as a very fitting topic to include in the lyrics because the teacher only wants money, and does not wish to go out of his way to help unless it will earn him more money. Then we could also acknowledge the bit about children not feeling so special until their birthdays as an effect of the greed of the adults who are too busy working to get money to make their children feel truly special, but attempt to make them feel better by buying them things instead.

I have only presented one possible interpretation that makes sense to me and throughout these comments you may find many more that are just as viable. I believe this is a very beautiful song.