Coming on February 25th is the latest Tears For Fears album, The Tipping Point. The set, which marks the duo's first collection since 2004, was informed in part by the 2017 death of main songwriter Roland Orzabal's wife, Caroline. Orzabal told Rolling Stone the album's title track deals specifically with her passing, “It came at a time when my (late) wife was very ill. I was watching her become a ghost of her former self. So the song’s narrator is in a hospital ward looking at people about to cross the threshold that we call death.”
He explained, “I think that when you’ve been close to someone for decades, they are living within you as well as without. And consciously I did not believe she would die, though subconsciously I was, without doubt, preparing for the inevitable, arming myself against the future shock.”
Orzabal said that he and Curt Smith scrapped the original album they started and began again from a more personal and organic place: “We went along with the process and amassed a lot of up-tempo attempts at hit singles. I like a lot of them but when configured into an album, they were tiring to listen to. There was no artistry, no dynamics, no personality to the album.”
Curt Smith said that the pair still view their new works in 20th century formats, admitting, “We do have an old school approach to albums in the sense that it needs to tell a story, as well as have a Side One and Side Two.” The band plans to tour behind the album upon its release.
Curt Smith admitted to us that he and Roland Orzabal are notoriously bad at choosing single releases for Tears For Fears: “I'm not convinced that we're that great at picking singles. We were the ones fighting against the American company to release 'Everybody Wants to Rule World' 'cause we thought it wasn't a single. We released 'Mad World' because we thought it would get us critical acclaim. We thought it was so not commercial and it ended up being a huge hit in Europe. I don't think that's our strength. Our strength is making albums.”