In this streaming age of ‘always-on music’, when most artists are terrified to take a month off, let alone 18 years, Tears For Fears return with brand new album ‘The Tipping Point’. It comes at a time when somehow, their music is back in vogue. Everyone loves a happy ending but Tears For Fears aren’t done yet and that’s good news for pop music.
Some 17 episodes in and I’m still learning about this process - especially how to talk to my own personal musical heroes - those artists I have spent weeks, perhaps months of my life listening to. People like Roland Orzabal from Tears For Fears. There are things you prepare of course (probably a bit too much) but what I really want to do most of all is have a conversation, and that means listening. Fortunately, Roland can talk, and when he does pretty much everything he says is both interesting and brutally honest.
The same can be said for Tears For Fears’ music I guess. From the earliest beginnings of 1983’s The Hurting to the band’s huge 1985 LP Songs From The Big Chair, their songs captured sadness, ambition, pain - confessional levels of emotional honesty. All this conveyed with the magic touch of songwriters who were not afraid to be weird.
But as the 80s music scene spun out of control so did Tears For Fears, famously making one of the longest, most tortuous and expensive albums in history in The Seeds Of Love. The aim was flawlessness but the result was a flawed masterpiece, an album that literally exhausted the band (at least as a duo) until a reformation 15 years later. When they came back in 2004 with Everyone Loves a Happy Ending. Roland describes that record as “Seeds Of Love’s little brother…it was lighter but lacked the ambition and emotional honesty of our earlier records”. Perhaps it left the duo with a sense of making that right.
Roland described the early days of the band’s career as “the chain of command” with the lowly artist duo at the bottom, their production partners Ian Stanley and Chris Hughes next up in the ranks, and then the record company, sitting pretty at the top and calling the shots. “It used to be the record company will give three album deal, that’s a ten year cycle, a lot of the biggest bands hit the wall at the time and it wasn’t their creativity, it was the revolving door…I think it’s over now. There’s no chain of command, we have a record company that says, okay we’ll do what you wanna do. And it’s shocking!”
But now Tears For Fears are back with brand new album The Tipping Point. It comes at a time when their music is back in vogue. A groundswell has seen more than 140 versions of ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ dropped onto streaming services in the past decade or so, urging the song towards one billion streams.
The duo has always navigated an intriguing relationship, often distanced from each other. Yet the two troubled souls that grew up together have come to accept each other as brothers, musically speaking. In the band’s early years, it was Curt who sang the hits and appeared to be the frontman and pop star of the band, with Roland the “backroom boy” (his words). Yet Roland stepped forth to dominate on The Seeds Of Love, his “musical Tourette’s” allowed to run amok. He continued TFF for two albums on his own in the 90s (the hip-hop influenced Elemental and rock workout Raoul And The Kings of Spain) working with the super-talented Alan Griffiths.
But a recent revelation is how Roland has learned to listen to Curt again. It is Curt’s self-critical leanings that stepped-in on The Tipping Point, firstly to throw out most of a batch of songs written in a ‘songwriting camp’ (a fascinating and tragicomic scenario in a way given the songs written as a duo). Second, to step forward once again as co-lead singer and a co-writer in Tears For Fears as a duo, not a committee of songwriters. The band is even enjoying their time in the music industry’s fickle spotlight together - from Zoom calls to an Ivor Novello lifetime award for Outstanding Song Collection. "When I saw were Curt was coming from the process of making the record became a joy. I felt the wind was blowing in our favour".
And here’s the rub. Tears For Fears are back into the culture at a time when many of the 80s peers, from Duran Duran to Gary Numan to Aha, are in fine form, making great records and sounding fabulous live. After the two years we’ve spent at home, the contagion we now need is to see legends playing truly great pop songs with smiles on their faces. Roland hinted that Tears For Fears may consider a live tour of new arrangements for their song catalogue (something Aha did successfully with MTV Unplugged in 2017).
Get your fingers twitching for that one. Until then forget 2004, for Tears For Fears the happy ending is still happening in 2022 and long may it last.
The Art of Longevity is produced by Audio Culture in partnership with Project Melody. Original music is by Andrew James Johnson.
The Tipping Point is released February 25th you can order here.