About

"Mad World" is a 1982 new wave song by the British band Tears for Fears. A 2001 cover of the song by composer Michael Andrews and singer-songwriter Gary Jules has been frequently used online in videos to elicit a somber or melancholic tone.

Origin

On September 20th, 1982, Tears for Fears released the song "Mad World" as their third single release (shown below, left). On January 19th, 2001, a cover of the song by composer Michael Andrews and singer-songwriter Gary Jules was featured in the science fiction horror-drama film Donnie Darko. On January 8th, 2006, a music video for the cover was uploaded to YouTube, which gathered more than 96 million views and 69,000 comments (shown below, right).

Spread

On October 17th, 2012, YouTuber james cameron uploaded a slideshow featuring illustrations of the Spongebob Squarepants character Squidward wearing a sad-looking expression with the Andrew and Jules cover playing in the background (shown below, left). On November 13th, 2014, YouTuber Hoocham uploaded a distorted version of the song played over a picture of Gordon Hurd titled "Mad World – Gary Jules (Ear Rape Edition)" (shown below, right).

On April 23rd, 2015, YouTuber Fran zi uploaded a video featuring the Andrew and Jules cover of "Mad World" along with a slideshow of illustrations featuring Pepe the Frog and Feels Guy (shown below).

On Vine

On December 17th, 2013, Viner JohnsEdge uploaded a video titled "1st attempt to singing Mad World by Gary Jules" (shown below, left). Within three years, the video received more than 2.4 million loops, 48,000 likes and 22,000 revines. On October 29th, 2015, Viner stop it, joe posted a clip of a teenager falling from a skateboard followed by an overlay of JohnsEdge singing the song (shown below, right).

On November 19th, YouTuber Tom Davies reuploaded the video to YouTube, where it gathered upwards of 1.15 million views and 1,100 comments.^[1] Over the next month, other remixes of the video began appearing on Vine and YouTube.^[2] On December 8th, JohnsEdge uploaded a compilation of "All Around Me Are Familiar Faces" Vines to YouTube, gaining over 1.7 million views and 1,700 comments in 10 months (shown below).

Search Interest

External References