February 2025
Sometimes, it’s worth the wait. English band Tears For Fears has been having a busy couple of years recently, with a new album, The Tipping Point, a world tour, a live album, and a concert film. Not bad for two guys in their mid-sixties.
Tears For Fears were one of the biggest bands in the 1980s. Headed up by guitarist Roland Orzabal and bass guitarist Curt Smith, songs like “Mad World,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and “Sowing the Seeds of Love” topped the charts as part of what many consider the Second British Invasion. Over the four decades of the band’s existence, they have released only seven studio albums, but their contributions to music have been significant.
Tears For Fears was formed in Bath, England, 1981 by Orzabal and Smith, after the break-up of their previous band, Graduate. The duo were joined by keyboardist Ian Stanley and drummer Manny Elias and the quartet released two chart-topping, synthesizer-heavy albums, The Hurting (1983) and Songs From The Big Chair (1985).
Their third album, The Seeds of Love, was recorded without Manny Elias, who left after their Big Chair World Tour in 1986, and with minimal contributions from Ian Stanley, who left in 1987 due to creative differences. The Seeds of Love was a significant departure from their previous work, with the synth-pop sound replaced with a more organic one. The sequencers and drum machines were ditched in favour of the increased use of traditional instruments (guitars, and occasionally acoustic drums, were featured on their previous recordings) recorded in jam sessions that were later edited down to a composite track. The songs, which incorporated influences ranging from jazz and soul to Beatlesque pop, were mostly co-written by Orzabal and keyboardist and singer Nicky Holland, who had toured with the band during their Big Chair World Tour.
The Seeds of Love album was also notable for the contributions of Oleta Adams, a singer and pianist who they saw performing in a hotel bar in Kansas City. This was at a point when Orzabal and Smith were looking for a change in how they made music, and sought her out when recording the new album, hoping that she could add to the organic feel by bringing a soulful warmth to their music. Adams is featured on three songs, including duetting with Orzabal on “Woman in Chains.”
While The Seeds of Love was commercially and critically successful, frustrations during the making of the album caused tensions between Orzabal and Smith, which ultimately led to Smith leaving the band in 1991.
For the next ten years, Orzabal carried on under the Tears For Fears name, releasing two albums, Elemental (1993) and Raoul and the Kings of Spain (1995), with collaborators Allan Griffiths, one of the touring guitarists from the Big Chair tour, and producer/guitarist Tim Palmer.
Neither of the albums sold as well as previous efforts, with both taking on a harder-edged, guitar-oriented sound. As the music critic for the Toronto Sun noted in a review of Tears For Fears concert at Massey Hall in Toronto in September 1993, the new TFF sound suffered from “an absence of balance.” Orzabal seemed to want to leave the past behind, as he and the band left out many of their past hits during the concert, and “feigning sweet intros” to others, before launching into the new, harder-edged songs. The reviewer noted that “Orzabal’s bitter medicine always went down a bit easier with a spoonful of Smith’s sugar.”
While he never officially disbanded Tears For Fears, Orzabal effectively put Tears For Fears on hiatus for the next four years, after touring the King of Spain album, during which he released an album, Tomcats Screaming Outside, under his own name in 2001. A collection of Tears For Fears B-sides and rarities, Saturnine Martial & Lunatic, was also released in 1996.
In 2000, some routine business paperwork led to Orzabal and Smith talking again for the first time in around a decade. The duo managed to resolve their differences and began working together again. The result was the fittingly titled album, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, in 2004, aided by producer and guitarist Charlton Pettus, Smith’s collaborator in his solo career since the mid-1990s, who also contributed to the songwriting. The critically and commercially successful album featured Smith more prominently in the songwriting, including “Who You Are,” written by Smith and Pettus, making it the first song released by Tears For Fears on which Orzabal was not credited as a writer.
The long road to The Tipping Point
Their most recent album, The Tipping Point, their first full album of original material in 18-years (they had released several singles and an EP in that period), was driven a lot by pain; heavily influenced by grief, loss and mental anguish. This has been a common theme for Tears For Fears for their entire history, with even their name being a reference to Arthur Janov’s primal therapy, a trauma-based psychotherapy designed to elicit the repressed pain of childhood trauma.
The album’s long-delayed release was exacerbated by scrapped collaborations with outside contributors and personal problems that led Orzabal and Smith to rework the album, retaining some songs and recording new material. Some of the new songs, like “Please Be Happy” and the title song, “The Tipping Point,” are painful love letters to Ozabal’s late wife Caroline, who lost her battle with mental illness and alcoholism in 2017.
When finally released in 2022, The Tipping Point, was a critical and commercial success, giving the band their highest chart peak in 30 years. The album spawned five singles: “The Tipping Point”, “No Small Thing”, “Break the Man”, “My Demons”, “Long, Long, Long Time”, and “Rivers of Mercy.” Once again, producer and guitarist Charlton Pettus contributed to the songwriting and the musical performance.
Not satisfied with just that, the band also recorded their concert at the Firstbank Amphitheater in Franklin, Tennessee, on 11 July 2023, which was released as both a live album, Songs For A Nervous Planet, which also featured four new studio tracks, and a theatrically-released concert film, Tears For Fears Live (A Tipping Point Film), both released in 2024. The touring line up featured: Roland Orzabal: Vocals, Guitar; Curt Smith: Vocals, Bass Gutar; Charlton Pettus: Guitar; Jamie Wollam: Drums; Doug Petty: Keyboards; Lauren Evans: Backing Vocals.
It appears that Ozabal and Smith aren’t quite done ruling the world.
Sources: Tears for Fears offer a live album and a concert film | AP News, The Tipping Point (Tears for Fears album) – Wikipedia, Tears for Fears – Wikipedia, Primal therapy – Wikipedia, SONGS FOR A NERVOUS PLANET – STANDARD 2CD | Tears For Fears.
