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Suffer the Children is easily one of my favorite Tears For Fears songs, perhaps only surpassed by Mad World (a quick aside–I know a lot of people love the slow version of that song, but it makes me want to hurl). I think it’s a great, sad song about parental neglect. I particularly dig the children’s voices singing “Na na na na na na na, na na na na na” in the background.

Here’s what Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal had to say about the song, from Wikipedia:

“Suffer The Children” was the first song we did together when we left Graduate. It was our very first experimentation with sequencers and drum machines, with a guy called David Lord, who worked with Peter Gabriel and different people down in Bath. So that was actually the first song we did as Tears For Fears.
—Curt Smith

The song’s title bears resemblance to a passage in the Biblical book of Matthew (19:14), in which Jesus Christ teaches on the innocence of children. According to Orzabal:

…We were really big on this at the time - we really thought children were born innocent and good and holy… When you’ve got kids of your own, you realize how bloody difficult it is. But it’s that kind of thing - saying look at what you’re doing with your child.
—Roland Orzabal

Here’s a link to the video

And of course, the lyrics:

It’s a sad affair
When there’s no one there
He calls out in the night
And it’s so unfair
At least it seems that way
When you gave him his life

And it seems so strange
That at the end of the day
Making love can be so good
But the pain of birth
What is it worth
When it don’t turn out the way it should

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