THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “British duo Tears For Fears’ first studio album in 17 years, The Tipping Point, is the bold, beautiful and powerful sound of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith finding themselves together, once again.
In October of 2021 the pair released the first single and title track, capturing the grief of watching someone you love lose a long-standing battle with disease. Their second single, No Small Thing, was a meeting of the minds as the pair went back to the drawing board and found the heart and soul that would complete the album. Their latest single, Break The Man, is an empowering yet groovy track that calls for a better balance between men and women. Inspired by the song’s lyrics, the music video encompasses a world that illustrates the constructed reality of the patriarchy — a place of endless hierarchies built on blind devotion to unstable and unsustainable structures. From the inside, the world appears infinite, but from the outside it’s a mere plaything in the hand of Mother Universe.
Tears For Fears — Orzabal (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Smith (vocals, bass, keyboards) — formed in Bath, England in 1981. After selling 30 million albums worldwide, performing to countless sold-out audiences, and winning various awards, the band represent an inimitable intersection of pop palatability, clever and cognizant lyricism and new wave innovation. Their 1983 debut, The Hurting, yielded anthems such as Mad World, Change and Pale Shelter, reaching Gold status in the U.S. 1985’s Songs from the Big Chair became a watershed moment for the group and music at large. Boasting the signature BRIT Award-winning Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Shout, Head over Heels, Mothers Talk and I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording), it went quintuple-platinum and topped the Billboard Top 200.
1989’s Seeds of Love proved to be Orzabal and Smith’s last collaboration together until Everybody Loves A Happy Ending in 2004, which rekindled the creative fire between them. The band engaged in a three-year touring whirlwind across North America, Japan, South Korea, Manila, and South America beginning in 2010. 2013 saw them return with their first recorded music in a decade: a cover of Arcade Fire’s Ready to Start. The band returned once more in 2017 with the Rule The World best-of collection, which once more catapulted the band back to the upper echelon of the UK album charts.
The duo’s DNA remains embedded within three generations of artists on both subtle and overt levels. Quietly casting a shadow over rock, hip-hop, electronic dance music, indie, and beyond, Kanye West interpolated Memories Fade on The Coldest Winter from the seminal 808s & Heartbreak, The Weeknd infused Pale Shelter into Starboy’s Secrets, David Guetta sampled Change for Always, and Drake utilized Ideas as Opiates as the foundation for Lust For Life, while Ally Brooke Hernandez, Adam Lambert, and Gary Jules recorded popular covers of Mad World and Disturbed took on Shout — and that’s only to name a few. Lorde also cut a haunting cover of Everybody Wants To Rule The World for the soundtrack of the blockbuster The Hunger Games – Catching Fire, which Tears For Fears gleefully would use as intro music live and thus bring everything full circle.
With The Tipping Point and comprehensive touring plans on the horizon Orzabal and Smith remain as loud as ever, while yet another generation gets ready to shout with them all over again.”
