One of the biggest bands of the 1980s, Tears For Fears, returned to the charts on Friday with their first new studio album in almost two decades.
The Tipping Point narrowly missed out on first place, which was instead taken by rapper Central Cee’s latest mixtape, 23. US skatepunk star Avril Lavigne took third place with her seventh studio album, Love Sux.
But Tears For Fears’ return to the Top 3 marks a triumphant return for a band that has weathered bitter breakups and personal tragedies over the past 30 years.
Even that album was on the brink, taking “seven years” to complete.
“We had a false dawn in 2016,” explains Roland Orzabal, the band’s chief songwriter and co-vocalist.
“There was a lack of trust from our management and the record company. ‘Can you make a record these days? Do you even know how?’
“So we ended up working with teams of songwriters, which was very, very strange. It was almost reminiscent of the days of Tin Pan Alley, when nobody trusted you to do your own thing. It had to go through the filter of younger, more successful songwriters.
“So we end up with a record that we liked half of, but didn’t like the other half.”
Lockdown gave them a chance to pause and reflect on the recording sessions. Curt Smith felt the album was cluttered and unfocused.
“What we lacked was an overview of what the topic should be. (The thing is “the mythical hit single,” explains Orzabal.)
So they shut out everyone else and reverted to the style of writing they had practiced in their early days at Snow Hill Council Estate in Bath.
“I came over to Curt’s house with a tape recorder and we just played around,” says Orzabal. “A voice in the back of my head said, ‘Curt is going to provide the key to completing the album.’ So we sat together and within an hour Curt started fumbling with this country riff and we were gone.”
This quiet, finger-plucked riff was the complete opposite of what they had been working on in the studio. It became the album’s opening song, No Small Thing, which stretched and unfolded to a “crazy Beatles-esque ending”, full of pounding drums and orchestral swells.
More songs soon followed – “Master Plan” (a take on record label interference), “Break The Man” (a plea for women’s equality), and the title track, a lawsuit for Orzabal’s wife, Caroline, who filed in 2017 after a long Fighting depression died alcoholism.
The band discussed these songs and more in a series of interviews with the BBC.
There was a time in the 1990s when the two of you didn’t speak to each other. how did you reconnect Who called who?
Roland: We actually reconnected via fax, so it was the opposite of Phil Collins’ divorce.
He [Curt] sent the message and it came out on the printer saying, “Look, here’s my number. It’s been nine years, call me.’ I thought, ‘Should I? Shouldn’t I?’ But eventually I called him and we had this conversation. At this point, Curt lives in America, so he has this mid-Atlantic way of speaking – he talks about “inspiration”, “motivation” and “direction”. I mean, that’s a boy from the Snow Hill Flats in Bath.
Curt: I don’t think I used those words
Roland: He can’t remember.
So you’ve changed a bit, but you obviously still have a connection?
Roland: We do, definitely without question. We’ve been working on this new album for seven years now. It’s a long, long time.
Why is it called The Tipping Point?
Curt: We felt like the world was at a turning point. The rise of the right, Trump’s election, the Black Lives Matter movement, the pandemic, the climate crisis… And I think for us personally, this shared experience was a turning point because there were so many false starts. The fact that we did it seemed like an appropriate title to us.
Roland: The turning point in the title track is a little more private and a little more morbid – because of the narrator [in that song] is in an infirmary, looking at someone he has loved for a long time, knowing they are going to die, watching their breath, looking at them and simply wondering at what point they will pass from life to death.
Behind this was a very difficult period in your private life. You lost your wife during the recording of the album and have known each other since you were young.
Roland: Yes, we were all 13 and 14 – me, Curt and Caroline and a bunch of other people hanging out on this council estate in Bath drinking pitchers of cider. We’ve known each other since we were kids, so there was a tremendously strong bond and this real feeling for each other – even as we grew up and changed and got money. So it was a fantastic, sometimes painful relationship.
You described My Demons as a song that could have been written for Depeche Mode.
Roland: We love Depeche Mode very much and were a bit jealous of them.
Why?
Curt: They were always cooler than us.
Roland: I remember we had some hits back in 1983 or 84 with our debut album The Hurting and I was watching Top of the Pops in the first house I bought in Bath when Depeche Mode showed up with Everything Counts. I just thought, ‘What’s the point in making another record?’ I was just devastated. i was depressed I was in tears.
A year later we were number one in the States with Shout and that just shows what you go through artistically. But yeah, My Demons is a bit of a hook back into that era. And we were joking – I do pretty good vocals, but it was almost built for Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan.
Last year you won an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Collection of Songs. What did that mean for you?
Roland: It was a great honor. And the nice thing is, the prize is for the songs and not for us as young pop stars, which we certainly aren’t anymore.
Which song haunts you the most?
Curt: Everybody Wants To Rule The World and Mad World, those are the two.
Roland: It has to have “world” in the title.
Curt: We don’t have anything called world on this album.
Roland: We have to change it again.
What do you think of Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ version of Mad World?
Roland: Well, it was a shock for me to actually hear these lyrics openly without being hidden behind this electronic arrangement. It sent shivers down my spine.
Curt: The first time I heard it was on American radio and I thought it was Michael Stipe. But what’s really enjoyable are versions of songs like this, and Lorde’s version of Everybody Wants to Rule The World really brings a different take on the song. And in a way their production matches the lyrics almost better than our versions did.
How does the new album feel compared to these classics?
Curt: We think this is one of the best works we’ve ever done. The looks we exchanged at the end of the recording – we both knew we had something really good, which is the best feeling you can get as a musician.
Tears For Fears spoke to BBC music correspondent Mark Savage; Samira Ahmed on the front row of BBC Radio 4; and Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty on BBC Breakfast.
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