“ Ideas as Opiates” is a song that originally served as the B-side to the “Mad World” single.
A later remix by noted British music producer Afterlife was featured on the 2005 reissue of the Tears for Fears greatest hits collection Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82–92). This mix is very similar to the album version, with the most notable differences being the additional echo added to the intro and middle sections and the subtraction of a subtle keyboard part from the bridge. The song had only one remix on its initial release, the World Remix that was featured on a 7″ double-single. The 7″ version of “Mad World” is the same mix of the song found on The Hurting. Not that Bath is very mad – I should have called it “Bourgeois World”! That came when I lived above a pizza restaurant in Bath and I could look out onto the centre of the city. At Polygram’s insistence, the band instead decided it may be something people would like to hear on the radio and held back its release, waiting to issue the song as a single in its own right after re-recording it with producer Chris Hughes, a former drummer with Adam and the Ants. It began life intended to be the b-side for the band’s second single “ Pale Shelter (You Don’t Give Me Love)“. After a few false starts with Orzabal on vocals, Smith took over and “suddenly it sounded fabulous”. “Mad World” was originally written on acoustic guitar when Orzabal was 19, it was a deliberate attempt to write something in the vein of Duran Duran’s “ Girls on Film“. 8.5 Chart positions for Adam Lambert’s version.8 Michael Andrews and Gary Jules version.