

"It's a bizarre viewpoint to watch people go about their daily routine, having to work for a living, when you're sitting in a flat, unemployed," he said. Here he would spend his time looking out the window, strumming guitar and watching people going about their daily business. Orzabal wrote the song when he was 19, living in an apartment above a pizza shop in Bath. This version became a UK number one hit when it was released as a single in 2003. It has since been covered by an extensive list of singers, most notably by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews for the soundtrack of the 2001 film Donnie Darko. It was the band's third single release and its first chart hit, reaching number 3 on the UK Singles Chart in November 1982. Mad World was originally written by Roland Orzbal for the British band Tears for Fears, in 1982.Mad World is a 1982 song written by Roland Orzabal and sung by Curt Smith, members of the British band Tears for Fears. It appeared on the band's debut LP The hurting and became an international hit.

However, the song reached a much higher success two decades later when it was covered by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules for the movie Donnie Darko. This version was stripped down in a slower, minimalist style. While the original version featured heavy percussion and synthesizers as a full musical backing, Gary Jules's only used a cello, a set of piano, and modest use of a vocoder on the chorus. The single's lyrics depict a dark view of the world from a teenager's eyes and intense experiences such as death meant to ease the tension and struggle. Mad World was influenced by Arthur Janov's Primal Fear and his theories. The single's B-Side, Ideas as Opiates (1982), takes its name from the concept of primal therapy presented in Arthur Janov's book Prisoners of pain. The free Mad World piano sheet music was released in 2002 on the movie's soundtrack but because of the success and the cult phenomenon generated by Donnie Darko, it was later issued as a proper single. In 2003 the song's popularity grew higher and higher and became the Christmas number one single in the UK. The free Mad World piano sheets were used in the commercial of the videogame Gears of War, in 2006 which led to moving it up the charts. In addition, Adam Lambert's performance at the eighth season of American Idol raised the sales and people's interest in Mad World. The single was used intensely in popular culture: in The Glee Project, Helix series, advertisements, and fan-made YouTube videos, television dramas such as Being Human, Brothers&Sisters, Cold Case, CSI, Dead like me, Smallville, The Mentalist, The OC, as a closing number in Butley, on Broadway, in the advertisement for Underground: The Julian Assage story and many others.
