Tears for Fears

• 1. Introduction

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  Tears for Fears, the English pop rock band from Bath, had a song from the 1980s climb back onto the UK singles chart in June 2023. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" then stayed for another 22 weeks. That is a long second life for a record that first appeared decades earlier. The band was formed in 1981 by two friends, Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal. Their career includes a name borrowed from psychology, an album that cost more than a million pounds, and a bitter break-up. It also includes a reunion that few people expected. Where did that unusual name come from? Why did a pair who sold millions of records stop speaking? And how did a band that had sold so much in the 1980s reach the top of the charts again in 2022?

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• 2. Therapy and Synthesizers

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  Orzabal and Smith met as teenagers in Bath, Somerset. They bonded over Thin Lizzy and Blue Öyster Cult, two hard rock acts that sound nothing like the band they would later become.

  Their first professional outing was Graduate, a mod revival and new wave group influenced by the Jam and two-tone music. In 1980 Graduate released an album called Acting My Age. Its single "Elvis Should Play Ska" nodded to Elvis Costello. It just missed the UK pop chart, yet it sold well in Spain and Switzerland. Graduate split in 1981.

  The pair then worked as session musicians for a band called Neon. There they met drummer Manny Elias, who would join their later group. Neon also included Pete Byrne and Rob Fisher, who went on to form Naked Eyes.

  A record by Tubeway Army, "Are 'Friends' Electric?" from 1979, pushed Orzabal and Smith toward electronic music. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Depeche Mode and the Human League confirmed the direction. They also copied the two-man format popularised by OMD and Soft Cell. The magazine Smash Hits compared their early clothes to those of OMD. Orzabal was also drawn to Joy Division, whose songs dealt with suicidal thoughts.

  Their first working name was History of Headaches. The name they kept came from primal therapy, a method developed by the American psychologist Arthur Janov. It became famous after John Lennon became Janov's patient in 1970. When the duo finally met Janov in the mid-1980s, they were disappointed. He had become quite "Hollywood" and wanted them to write a musical for him.

  Before all that, a local musician named Ian Stanley offered them free use of his home 8-track studio. He became their keyboard player. After two demos, the band signed to Mercury Records in 1981 through A&R manager Dave Bates. Their first single, "Suffer the Children", came out that November. A first version of "Pale Shelter" followed in March 1982. Neither one sold.

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• 3. The Big Chair

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  In November 1982 a third single, "Mad World", reached number 3 in the UK. The debut album The Hurting followed in March 1983. Chris Hughes and Ross Cullum produced it. Its lyrics drew on Orzabal's bitter childhood and his interest in primal therapy. The Hurting went to number one in the UK, earned Platinum status and spent 65 weeks on the chart. "Mad World", "Change" and a re-recorded "Pale Shelter" all reached the UK top five.

  Late in 1983 came a stopgap single, "The Way You Are". It leaned on sampling and programmed rhythms and reached the UK top 30, well below its predecessors. The band later wrote in the liner notes to their 1996 B-sides collection: "this was the point we realised we had to change direction".

  In early 1984 they tried a new producer, Jeremy Green, for "Mothers Talk". They were unhappy with the result and brought Hughes back to redo it. It came out in August 1984 as a UK top-20 hit. Then "Shout" arrived that November and began their international fame.

  Songs from the Big Chair appeared in February 1985 and entered the UK chart at number 2. The sound was more sophisticated and less purely synth-pop. Orzabal, Stanley and Hughes formed the creative core. The album earned triple platinum in the UK and quintuple platinum in the US. There it held the top spot for five weeks in the summer of 1985.

  Its title came from Sybil, a book and television miniseries about a woman with dissociative identity disorder. She found refuge in her analyst's big chair. Orzabal and Smith said each song on the album had a personality of its own.

  "Shout" reached number 4 in the UK and number one in the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" was their highest UK hit at number 2 and also topped the US and Canada. "Head over Heels" reached number 3 in the US.

  A world tour filled most of 1985. They played the Montreux Golden Rose Rock and Pop Festival in May. In September they performed "Shout" at the MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York. On the road, they heard a singer and pianist named Oleta Adams in a Kansas City hotel bar and invited her to collaborate on their next album.

  In February 1986 the band won the Brit Award for Best British Single for "Everybody Wants to Rule the World". They also had nominations for Best British Group and Best British Album. They played the song at the ceremony. It was the last public performance by drummer Manny Elias, who left soon afterward.

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• 4. The Missing Live Aid Slot

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  On the 13th of July 1985, Tears for Fears were due to play JFK Stadium in Philadelphia for Live Aid. On the morning of the event, it was announced that they had pulled out. They had reportedly been billed before they had even agreed to appear. The blues rock group George Thorogood and the Destroyers, popular around Philadelphia, took their place.

  The official reason involved two backing musicians. Guitarist Andrew Sanders and saxophonist Will Gregory had quit when their contract expired. Alan Griffiths on guitar and Josephine Wells on saxophone filled in for most of the remaining 1985 tour. Instead of playing, the band promised proceeds from their concerts in Tokyo, Sydney, London and New York.

  They also gave to the British campaign Sport Aid in 1986. It was a sister project of Band Aid, in which people ran races of different lengths to raise money for African famine relief. Its slogan was "I Ran the World". The band answered with a rewritten hit titled "Everybody Wants to Run the World". It reached number 5 in the UK and number 4 in Ireland.

  They had a quieter link to the earlier Band Aid record from 1984. Its introduction included a slowed-down sample of their song "The Hurting".

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• 5. The Million-Pound Album

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  The Seeds of Love reached shops in 1989 at a reported production cost of more than a million pounds. Ian Stanley appeared on it for the last time as a band member. He and Chris Hughes had both left the sessions early over creative differences. Orzabal wrote most of the album with keyboardist Nicky Holland, who had toured with the band in 1985.

  The recording wandered through several studios and sets of producers over many months. Eventually the band scrapped the results and took control themselves, with engineer Dave Bascombe helping. Much of the material came from jam sessions that were later edited down.

  The delay hurt their management company. It had over-extended itself in other businesses and was hoping for an earlier release to pay off its debts.

  The finished record kept the band's familiar sound while adding hints of jazz, blues and the Beatles. The Beatles influence shows on "Sowing the Seeds of Love". The second single, "Woman in Chains", featured Phil Collins on drums and shared vocals with Oleta Adams, the Kansas City singer they had met on tour. It reached the top 40 in the UK, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the US.

  The album entered the UK chart at number 1 and reached the US top 10. It eventually sold millions of copies worldwide. A world tour sponsored by Philips helped recover the recording debt. The band's May 1990 show in Santa Barbara, California, was filmed as the Going to California video.

  Virgin Books also published a 64-page companion in 1990. It included musical scores for each track, rare promotional photographs and comments from Orzabal, Holland and Adams.

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• 6. Split and Solo Years

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  After touring The Seeds of Love, Orzabal and Smith had an acrimonious falling out and parted in 1991. Orzabal's perfectionism in the studio took part of the blame. So did Smith's jetsetting lifestyle and his wish to slow the pace of work. Smith was also going through a divorce. A third factor was their manager, Paul King, who declared bankruptcy in 1990 and was convicted of fraud in 2004.

  Orzabal kept the Tears for Fears name. In 1992 he released the single "Laid So Low (Tears Roll Down)" to promote the compilation Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92). It gathered every single that reached the top twenty in the UK or internationally, except the Sport Aid record. It peaked at number 2 in the UK and went double Platinum.

  Elemental followed in 1993, made with longtime collaborator Alan Griffiths and co-produced by Tim Palmer. Its hit "Break It Down Again" reached the top twenty in the UK, Canada, France and Italy. The album stalled at number 45 in the US but still earned a Gold disc there for over half a million sales.

  Raoul and the Kings of Spain arrived in 1995, again with Griffiths and Palmer. It was more reflective and explored Orzabal's Spanish heritage with a Latin flavour. Raoul was the name his parents had originally wanted for him, and also the name of his first son. The title track reached the UK top 40, but sales fell short of the band's usual standard.

  In 1996 the label Mercury issued Saturnine Martial & Lunatic, a collection of B-sides and rare tracks from 1982 to 1993.

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• 7. Paperwork and a Reunion

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  Around 2000, Orzabal helped Smith with some routine legal paperwork, and the two began talking again. Smith flew back to England, where Orzabal still lived. They had dinner and agreed to make an album together.

  Songwriter Charlton Pettus, Smith's collaborator since the mid-1990s, joined the sessions. In under six months they wrote and recorded 14 songs. L.A. Reid signed them to Arista Records in 2003. Company mergers and Reid's departure then led the band to end the deal. Everybody Loves a Happy Ending came out in September 2004 on New Door Records in the US.

  On the 2004 tour, Oleta Adams made an unrehearsed appearance in Kansas City to sing "Woman in Chains". The UK and Europe received the album in March 2005 on Gut Records. The comeback single "Closest Thing to Heaven" was their first UK top-40 hit in a decade. Its colourful video featured the actress Brittany Murphy riding in a hot air balloon.

  A June 2005 concert at the Parc des Princes in Paris became the live release Secret World - Live in Paris. It sold more than 70,000 physical copies in France and the Benelux countries.

  Meanwhile, their old song "Mad World" had found new life elsewhere. Michael Andrews and Gary Jules re-recorded it for the 2001 film Donnie Darko. A 2003 single release of that version spent three consecutive weeks at number one in the UK. It won Orzabal his second Ivor Novello Award.

  From 2006 to 2008 the band also played the Night of the Proms concerts in Belgium.

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• 8. The Tipping Point

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  In April 2010 the band joined the reformed Spandau Ballet for seven dates in Australia and New Zealand. Then they headlined four shows in Southeast Asia and played 17 dates in the United States.

  New music took longer. In August 2013 they put a cover of Arcade Fire's "Ready to Start" on SoundCloud. It later appeared on a Record Store Day EP, Ready Boy & Girls?, along with covers of Hot Chip and Animal Collective songs. Orzabal said in October 2014 that the band had signed to Warner Music Group. By 2017 they were working with songwriter and producer Sacha Skarbek on the seventh album.

  In July 2016 they played their first UK dates in over ten years, including Camp Bestival in Dorset. In the summer of 2017, Orzabal's wife, Caroline, died. The band withdrew from the remaining North American shows but resumed in September at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Orzabal began writing songs during her illness that later appeared on the new album. His health problems also postponed a planned UK arena tour from 2018 to 2019.

  In September 2021, Orzabal and Smith received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection. The Tipping Point arrived on the 25th of February 2022 on Concord Records. It entered the UK chart at number 2 and the US Billboard 200 at number 8. In July 2022, Smith suffered four broken ribs in a road accident, and the band cut short its tour.

  In September 2024 they released Songs for a Nervous Planet. It combined eighteen live tracks, recorded on the 11th of July 2023 in Franklin, Tennessee, with new studio songs. It became their seventh UK top-10 album. In November 2025, a 40th anniversary edition of Songs from the Big Chair reached the UK top 40, and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" charted again.

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