In a 2010 interview with The Guardian, Curt Smith of groundbreaking New Wave duo Tears For Fears said the following about record companies – “They want cookie-cutter acts. For us, making a record would be a money-losing proposition”. This seems to be the unfortunate reality for most music acts that rose to prominence in yesteryear. The narrative about these acts in the music press seems to be inextricably linked to their past – leading them to also have the label “legacy acts” attached to them. This renders them relatively unmarketable to a younger audience despite a stellar back-catalog heavy on anthems that have transcended generations and that have stood the test of time. This is despite the fact that many of these artists are recording and releasing music that retains the elements of what made them great while also having a stamp of modernity. Based on Curt Smith’s remarks to The Guardian, not many would have held their breath for a new album from the duo. Most would have resigned to the idea that the band’s 2004 album “Everybody loves a happy ending” (their first as a duo in over a decade) was their final album. Hence, at the end of 2014, when Tears for Fears teased a new album, fans were beyond elated. “Everybody loves a happy ending” had a rather polarizing effect on the band’s fanbase owing to a sound that in ways felt like a departure from their trademark sound and veered closer to something Beatles-esque. Hence, the question of consequence this time around is whether or not Tears for Fears has undone that polarization and made the wait worthwhile for their new album “The Tipping Point”. Fortunately, the band has reinvigorated their sonic mojo and have more than delivered the goods on this album.
It is impossible to dive into the specifics with regards to the album without devoting at least some word real estate to its genesis. It appeared that that the dynamics that Curt Smith pointed out in his 2010 interview with The Guardian were still very much in play. The duo (Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith) were encouraged to work with current hitmakers (one of them being two-time Ivor Novello award winner Sacha Skarbek) on a quest to manufacture “hit singles”. The duo embraced this approach despite it being at odds with their longstanding ethic of creating a cohesive album from which hit singles emerged organically. The pairing of a veteran act with current songwriters/producers is not a particularly novel idea and almost never has it been a catalyst for a veteran act’s return to the forefront of contemporary culture. New Wave hitmakers Duran Duran learned this the hard way with their 2007 album “Red Carpet Massacre” for which they teamed up with “producer of the moment” Timbaland and hitmaker Justin Timberlake. Despite the album’s potent lead single “Falling Down” (a song that belongs in the same league as hits such as “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone”), the “modernity” of the record did nothing to break the band to a new generation and the album sounded like something that could have been great but wasn’t. Hence, it is unclear as to why anyone would suggest Tears For Fears going down a similar route.
After listening to what they had recorded, both Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith acknowledged that the musical output of those writing/recording sessions sounded nothing like them. They retreated from this misguided approach, and went back to the drawing board to start working on a new set of songs. They reconvened in early 2020 and went back to the basics with acoustic guitars in a room together and from this sonic interplay between the two emerged the Americana-tinged “No Small Thing” – the first song on ‘The Tipping Point” album. The band embarked on creating the seminal album experience (a bold move in an era in which the relevance of the album format is being questioned given the consumption of unbundled tracks being the new norm). In a TedX talk that Curt Smith gave in San Francisco in 2010, he mentioned that “I use music to talk about things that I find confusing, things that I find hurtful. If I am happy, I don’t write songs since I am too busy actually being happy”. The band seems to have channeled this spirit and made an album that projects their emotional response to the events shaping their lives in the last few years. Noteworthy examples include the tragic downward spiral (which led to demise) of Roland Orzabal’s former wife Caroline, the BLM protests, political upheaval, the #MeToo movement, and the harsh and devastating manifestations of climate change. This makes their album name and title track “The Tipping Point” an apt one – since for each of these phenomena, there is a point of no return – the tipping point! In a sense, the choice of the title track as the lead single was wise in that it offers listeners a glimpse into the themes being explored on the album.
Since our blog is attached to a 24/7 global online radio broadcast, we feel compelled to start off by commenting on the radio fodder that this album offers before we comment on the album as a cohesive unit. To this end, the highlights are as follows:
“Break the man”:
Nothing screams “comeback” the way this song does – which makes us wonder why this up-tempo jam (featuring Curt Smith as the primary vocalist and songwriter) was relegated to “third single” status on the album when it would have made a fantastic lead single. This song also has the highest likelihood of being a bridge to a generation that is unfamiliar with the history of Tears For Fears. “Break the man” opens with delicate piano embellishments (reminiscent of the band’s 1989 single “Advice for the young at heart” from their “Seeds of Love” album) floating gently over a soundscape of mid-tempo electronic beats. The verses are ushered in with the eruption of guitars shattering the soundscape and changing the tempo of the song. Sweeping harmonies and a sing-out-loud chorus give sonic form to an appeal for putting women in positions of power while shattering the proverbial patriarchy. The chorus is as follows:
She’s the fire and the fallout
She reminds you of the things we never talk about
She’s the lover with the best-laid plan
To break the man
She’s a sinner in a side show
She feels at home when there’s nowhere left to go
She’s the devil you understand
Break the man
Thematically, it feels like a sequel to their 1989 hit single “Woman in chains” – a song about domestic abuse of women. The fact that over three decades have elapsed since the cry for help for women and an appeal for more women to be in positions of power suggests that strides in female empowerment have not been significant enough. The song’s dreamy outro mirrors the intro leaving the listener wanting more. Nothing on the duo’s “Everybody loves a happy ending” album was this instant.
The Tipping Point:
The album’s lead single is a window into the head space of singer and Tears For Fears co-founder Roland Orzabal as he sat in a hospital in 2017 wondering at what point his wife Caroline would make the crossover from life to death and about when the mourning would begin. While the song is intensely personal, the bleakness of it all is applicable to the collectively reality of the world over the last two years. The song’s larger than life production bells and whistles compensate both for the darkness of its thematic core as well as the song’s rather pedestrian melody. In an interview with The Current, Roland Orzabal offers the best description of this song and how their longtime collaborator Charlton Pettus laid its sonic foundation – “Now I think Charlton [Pettus] was getting a bit miffed that we were working with other guys when he knew exactly, having been touring with us for years, he knew exactly how to write a Tears For Fears song. He thought, let me get some kind of moody synthesizer. Use the beat from “Everybody Wants to Rule the World“, a little of a “Head over heels” piano motif, and it sounds horrendous. It sounds like Frankenstein’s monster. But in fact, what he created was the germ of the most beautiful, beautiful yearning song.”
I am on the fence as to whether “My Demons” and “End Of Night” qualify as potent radio fodder. The up-tempo “My Demons” brims with the lyrical and sonic swagger of material that dominated Roland Orzabal’s solo album “Tomcats Screaming Outside” but like the album’s title track, the melody feels rather simplistic. The mid-tempo “End of night” fares far better on the melodic front and offers a hope and positivity that one experiences when on the verge of a turnaround or a life narrative that dramatically shifts towards something better. It could make a worthy follow-up to “Break the man” as a single.
With the rest of the album, the listener is bound to get a sense of a band that has stayed true to their approach to creating music by mainly drawing heavily from their life experiences. “Please be happy” feels like a thematic sequel to “The Tipping Point” and is an appeal to Roland Orzabal to move on from the loss of his former wife Caroline as he deals with the aftermath of this tragedy. “Rivers Of Mercy” opens with police sirens and a gunshot (an explicit reference to the BLM protests that took center stage a few months into the Covid19 pandemic across the US). It quickly drifts into something quite the opposite as it appeals for a catharsis from chaos and pain through mercy, and understanding as highlighted by the following lyric:
Drop me in rivers of mercy, yeah
Dare I imagine some faith and understanding?
Drop me in rivers of mercy, yeah
Bring out the dead tonight and bathe them in your sacred light to
Wash away the pain (Wash away the pain)
Save me from the shadows, yeah
Cry like a siren
The light on my horizon
Drop me in rivers of mercy, yeah
Sonically, it paints a picture of someone drifting right under the surface of the gentle waves of the sun-kissed Mediterranean. This just might be one of the most beautiful moments on the album. It also highlights Roland Orzabal’s competency as a vocalist.
Stylistically, “The Tipping Point” feels like a far better sequel to their 1989 album “Seeds of Love” than its predecessor “Everybody loves a happy ending” does. It is exhilarating, thought-provoking, and most importantly honest. It speaks to the confusing moment many of us find ourselves in right now. It is unclear as to whether this album will be the swan song of Tears For Fears (in interviews, they come across as being incredibly non-committal as it applies to more new music). In case it is, it makes a “happier ending” than their last album did and is likely to undo the polarization of their fanbase that their last album might have been a catalyst for. It is great to have Tears For Fears back in the limelight. Both Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith have retained the spunk that made them global superstars and have created a body of material that holds up well alongside the rest of their back-catalog. Now we just hope we don’t have wait another two decades for the follow-up to “The Tipping Point”.
STAR RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
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In case you did not pick up on this earlier, the blog you are reading is affiliated with Radio Creme Brulee – an online radio station that features an eclectic mix of current pop and rock music from both sides of the Atlantic alongside hits, forgotten gems, and rarities from the last three decades. Alongside newer artists, we also play plenty of newer music by bands that rose to prominence in the 80s,90s, and the 00s. Noteworthy examples include Simply Red, Wet Wet Wet, Coldplay, Kylie Minogue, Dubstar, Tears For Fears, Duran Duran, Camouflage, Spandau Ballet, INXS, Depeche Mode, Suede, The Corrs, Jamiroquai, Johnny Hates Jazz, Simple Minds, and Culture Club.
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I first got into Tears for Fears about ten years ago, in my early teens. It happened right as my Queen phase was winding down and I was falling headfirst into an obsession with all things Eighties synth-pop. That era—saturated with glossy production, dramatic vocals, and those irresistible synths—pulled me in like a magnet. I romanticized the decade completely, and Tears for Fears quickly became the nucleus of that fascination. Their music wasn’t just catchy; it had sonic sophistication that set them apart from their peers. That was enough for me, as at that time I didn’t yet pay close attention to lyrical content in music, unless it made me laugh.
Some of their tracks, like “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” “Head Over Heels,” and “Sowing the Seeds of Love,” became instant all-time favorites. Even back then, they struck me as timeless—grand and layered, emotionally resonant in a way that stuck. At the time, I mentally crowned Tears for Fears as kings of the new wave scene, with Duran Duran coming in as a strong runner-up. (Ironically, it was Duran Duran I ended up seeing live that year, but that’s a different story.) Still, there was something about the complexity in Tears for Fears’ songwriting and production that kept pulling me back, even when I didn’t fully understand it.
That subtle complexity ended up opening the door for me to other refined acts from the era—most notably Johnny Hates Jazz, whom I discovered shortly after and obviously still regard highly. Big Chair quickly cemented itself as a cornerstone album in my life. It hasn’t aged a bit. None of their albums have in my opinion. Honestly, I’m constantly surprised by how many younger listeners still gravitate toward Big Chair, even if they don’t explore the rest of TFF’s catalog. That album in particular seems to hold a kind of universal reverence. Since my first deep dive into their discography, Big Chair has always hovered near the top of my personal ranking.
In 2016, I remember listening to it frequently; yet at that time I very much gravitated towards Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, which offered a totally different but equally compelling experience—more whimsical and modern in tone. Back then, I saw them as equals in different moods. But things have shifted over time, especially with the arrival of Tipping Point. Now, The Seeds of Love stands tall as my personal favorite. Maybe it’s because I’ve wandered through so many genres over the past decade, and returning to ‘80s music with fresh ears has given me new perspective. That same sophistication I admired early on now lands with more impact. The melodies, the arrangements, the emotional range—it all feels even richer with time. Seeds is bold, ambitious, and stunningly well-crafted.
Interestingly, The Tipping Point strikes me as more of a spiritual sequel to The Hurting than to Seeds of Love, not so much in sound but in thematic scope. While The Hurting explored childhood trauma and pain, Tipping Point seems to echo similar themes but through the lens of later in life—grief, aging, loss. That’s the vibe I get, at least. It feels like a continuation of those somber reflections, evolved by experience.
If there’s a true successor to The Seeds of Love, though, I’d argue it would be Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. It carries the same Beatles-esque textures that were so prominent in “Sowing the Seeds,” and it feels like a natural continuation of that sonic vision—especially since it was their return to working as a duo. Even the visual aesthetic of the album mirrors that of Seeds. Strangely, I didn’t pick up on the Beatles influence in ELAHE until much later. But once I heard it, it was impossible to un-hear—like a musical thread that quietly connected those two albums across decades.
@Sammie: First, a HUGE thank you for taking time to share your thoughts and musical journey here as it applies to Tears for Fears. There is a lot to unpack here so I will go one point at a time.
I have always struggled with the synth-pop label for a band like Tears for Fears since I think that label only truly applies to them in the context of “The Hurting” – an album I never really got into. In fact, the first time the song “Pale Shelter” landed for me was when it was aptly introduced into a scene in the Netflix TV show “White Gold”.
Your point on the sonic sophistication of Tears For Fears is spot on. The production is so multi-layered. The lyricism is profound. Their sound starts to blend genres starting with “Songs from the big chair”. Duran Duran is another criminally underrated act- and it also doesn’t help that they rarely ever revisit their finest (but not celebrated) moments in concerts – despite touring almost every alternate year.
Johnny Hates Jazz is hands down one of the few luxury brands of pop music that the average American is blissfully unaware of and the loss is theirs.
“Songs from the big chair” is so wedded into the fabric of the history of pop culture. What I don’t like about it is how it is overexposed to a point wherein casual fans think Tears for Fears had nothing else to offer. Narratives are powerful – just like the one in America where people think a-ha is a one-hit wonder with “Take On Me”. These narratives, despite how harmful they are to a music act, stick and unless people start to change their music consumption patterns, this unfortunately dynamic will linger longer than it should.
As much as I like Big Chair, that is NOT the album from which I play songs on repeat. The songs I play on repeat by Tears for Fears are from “Seeds of love”, “Tipping Point”, and “Elemental”. Yet, I still think the album serves as the best gateway to the uninitiated for Tears for Fears. Since you like this album so much, you might like our 40th anniversary retrospective of this album that we published almost a year ago:
https://www.radiocremebrulee.com/british/funny-how-time-flies-songs-from-the-big-chair-by-tears-for-fears-turn-40/
And here is a recommendation (a top 5 Tears for Fears track for me now) that you might have missed since it is NOT on Spotify:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcADdqgCt-0
As for “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending”, I struggled with this album. In fact, the only song we feature from this album on our radio broadcast is “Secret World. Unfortunately, the first I saw them live was also when they were promoting the album. My boarding school room mate and I attended this together and could not help agreeing on how much the new material (the exception being “Secret World”) diluted the punch of the setlist. I did NOT feel this when they were promoting “Tipping Point”. Their concert at Madison Square Garden (2023) was fantastic (here are the highlights):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3FPE98E0wg
It is telling that “Secret World” is the only song they revisit from that album on recent concert setlists. It was a polarizing album when it released and it did NOT do what it needed to cement their status as musicians of the moment. Roland Orzabal calls this out a lot. They had no issues getting TV spots to perform material from that album – but all it would do is lead to sales of their older material from the 80s.
“Seeds of Love” is an album I did not appreciate as a child. I think I needed to grow up a little to appreciate it. My reacquaintance with the album was via the serendipitous discovery of “Advice for the young at heart”. Roland got so ambitious on this – which is probably what led to it being such an expensive album to make. I think this album struggled because it did NOT have any obvious singles in the way that its sonic predecessor did. But to your point, Seeds is bold, ambitious, and stunningly well-crafted. I could have NOT said this better.
Thematically, I can see why you would look at Tipping Point as being a sequel to The Hurting. The album’s title track digs straight into personal loss that Roland suffered when his wife Caroline passed away. But I did not feel the same about tracks such as “Break the man” and “Rivers of Mercy” which address to the broader moment we are in right now as a society – which, to me, reminds me of the line “the politics of greed” from “Sowing the seeds of love”.
Since you have romanticized and are discovering the 80s, here is a song for you that I think captures the vocal swagger of Tears for Fears with the sonic gloss of Johnny Hates Jazz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s25Z7Cz1o9g
If you like the above, definitely give our radio station a spin since I think you have even more of an exhilarating journey of music discovery that lies ahead (no pressure obviously – and please be brutal with your feedback if/when you tune in).
Last, but not least, what is your approach to music discovery these days? Please share!
Thank you once again for your super thoughtful comment!
I left some comments on your JHJ articles about a year and change ago. I am not “just discovering” the 80s like it seems that you’ve gathered.
But back to TFF. Well, I did point out that Seeds of Love is my #1 rn. I did see that Big Chair article and was gonna comment on that one, but realized you also have an article about terrestrial radio, which I feel is the #1 cause of music taste dilution. More than streaming, more than algorithms, and affects the public on a much larger scale.
Interesting you mention Secret World, that’s the main track from ELAHE that I’ve revisited.
More info about my music discovery means on the terrestrial radio article…
@Sammie: I absolutely remember your comments on JHJ from a year ago – and I remember just how pleasantly surprised I was that someone in your generation in the US was aware of them. They were in shock when I first interviewed them at the age of 29 (they were confused as to why I knew who they were) so you can imagine how they would feel about you being into their music!
I must have totally mis-worded my last comment. I definitely did not mean to suggest that you were just discovering the 80s. This has clearly been a long journey for you so far – but I still think there is a lot more left (this applies to me too!).
Seeds of Love, oddly enough, has more radio fodder than people give it credit for. Somehow, I still cannot get into “Woman in Chains” despite the powerful vocals of Oleta Adams – but others such as “Swords and knives” and “Advice for the young at heart” (might be my all-time favorite by Tears for Fears) feel almost tailor-made for radio.
Since you mentioned, “Secret World”, I figured also share another song that feels Beatles-esque from that era that you MIGHT like. It was on the “Secret World” single. It is a song called “Floating down the river once again”. I quite like that one!
As for terrestrial radio and the dilution of tastes, I don’t think the format of broadcast radio itself, lends to a situation of dilution but at least in the US, after 3 conglomerates bought over north of 80% of the stations, and removed curatorial autonomy, that 100% diluted tastes and homogenized the overall sound of the American mainstream. Terrestrial radio stations overseas at the time did NOT do that. In fact, when I returned to the US (after living overseas for over a decade), I tuned in to Radio 1 Oslo (it’s not anywhere near what it used to be now) and got my fix of a mix of pop/rock music that felt far more interesting and exciting at the time.
Thank you once again for your engagement on here!
Yes, When I mentioned terrestrial radio, it was in reference to AMERICAN terrestrial radio in particular. I am not familiar with the situations elsewhere, but the intense repetition of US FM radio began getting more glaring the more diverse my own taste got.
Honestly, I used to struggle with Woman in Chains too. I think I just needed to mature and get into more genres before I could appreciate it fully.
But nowadays I think it’s brilliant! The whole album! “Famous Last Words” gives me that emotion where you want to cry but no tears end up coming out. Very few songs I’ve ever listened to do that!
I agree that “Advice” is a masterful song!
But lately I’ve veered towards “Year of the knife” and “Badman’s song”
@Sammie: The intense repetition only started after the passing of the Telecommunications Deregulation Act and the takeover of American terrestrial radio by conglomerates followed by the removal of the curatorial autonomy of DJs.
“Famous Last Words” is such a great song. Roland’s vocals on that one are so great. “Advice” is so criminally underrated. Unfortunately, it is the one they end up gutting whenever they are promoting a new album. Fortunately, I’ve heard it live twice (watched these guys around 4 times in concert over the years).
Definitely curious as to what you think of my recommendations in the previous comment!!