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Tears For Fears are not entirely satisfied with their new concert film.
“There are always things you would change,” Curt Smith, 63, says. “I would change my trousers, definitely,” bandmate Roland Orzabal, also 63, says with a laugh. “My trousers, what the hell? I should have bought some flares.”
You’d have to watch the film Tears For Fears Live (A Tipping Point Film) on the big screen and look really closely to see that Orzabal’s trousers were a little too long at the performance, which was filmed a year ago in Franklin, in the US state of Tennessee.
The brilliant concert film will be shown in selected cinemas worldwide on October 24 and 26. At the same time, the English band will be releasing a new album.


It’s somewhat surprising that Songs For A Nervous Planet was announced as Tears for Fears’ first official live album, considering the duo have released a number of live albums in the past.
Orzabal says that these were arranged by the record company at the time. “We had no control over it at all.” The days when others decided what Tears For Fears released are long gone.
Alongside classics such as “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”, “Mad World” and “Shout”, the songs from their latest studio album The Tipping Point fit seamlessly into the set list, including “No Small Thing” and “Break The Man”.


“We were quite pleasantly surprised, or pleasantly shocked even, that it went in the top five around the world,” Orzabal says about the album, which was released in February 2022.
The Tipping Point was well received by fans and critics. It also changed Tears For Fears as a live band.
“All of a sudden, those new songs sounded better to me. We’d become a slightly different band. We’d also managed to age with the music,” says Orzabal, comparing it to the two unofficial live albums.
“It’s a completely different band … to the one that was playing “Massey Hall” (1985) or even “Going to California” (1990).


For Smith, the concert film and album are a chance to show a wider audience that they are a good live band. Are Tears For Fears underappreciated? “Well, I guess underappreciated is a word, but I think it’s unaware more than anything else.”
“There’s a vast majority of the audience, obviously, that has never seen us play live … From our early days, we were called a synth duo, [even though] we were both guitar players,” Smith says. “Showing people how good the band is live was important. We do enjoy playing live. We are at heart live performers.”
Tears For Fears, however, did not want to release a purely live album.

“We don’t really want to talk about the old stuff because that’s going to be very boring. It’s going to be like promoting a greatest hits package,” explains Orzabal, who, like Smith, now lives in the US.
“The record company said to us, we’re going to need another track or something to promote this, a new track. We actually had … a lot of songs lying around.”
“Say Goodbye To Mum And Dad” is a surprisingly cheerful pop anthem for Tears For Fears. In contrast, “Astronaut” is a dark but catchy number. It’s about a “guy who doesn’t feel he belongs here … that sense of alienation,” Smith explains. The new songs definitely leave an impression.


Orzabal wrote “The Girl That I Call Home” for his new wife, Emily. She was also the inspiration for the atmospheric “Emily Said”, which incorporates psychedelic 1960s pop and a children’s choir.
“It’s one of those that’s fun to make because it’s an exercise in music more than anything else,” Smith says. “Now we’re trying to learn to play it live. It’s a challenge.”
The new songs are explicitly not bonus tracks.

"Using AI is so disappointing. Pay a real artist": Tears for Fears faces a backlash over their new AI-generated album art. #AI #TearsForFears #SongsForANervousPlanet
Read more: https://t.co/Eseho9GjT6 pic.twitter.com/7yj3h5UiGG
— Michael Greer 💙 (@MGreer_PR) September 28, 2024

“Normally, bonus tracks are at the end of an album. But when we finished the four tracks, we knew that they were not bonus tracks. … They have a life of their own,” Smith explains.
“It’s an updated sort of statement as to where we are now, because the tipping point was driven by pain at the time – Orzabal’s first wife, Caroline, died in 2017 – and this is far more optimistic. It does show you that we’ve come out of that and things can be OK.”
And it shows that more than 40 years after their debut album The Hurting, Tears for Fears are still an exceptional band that do not limit themselves in terms of music – and from whom, according to Orzabal, we can expect a few more releases.
“Gone are the days where we were compared to other bands,” he says. “We can do what we want. It’s wonderful.” For now, however, he has something more important to do. “My ambition is to find a good pair of trousers,” he jokes.


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Tears For Fears  members Curt Smith (left) and Roland Orzabal  have released a concert film and a new live album Songs For A Nervous Planet. Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP 

Roland Orzabal (left) and Curt Smith of Tears for Fears, perform at Ameris Bank Amphitheatre in June 2022, in Alpharetta, Georgia. Photo: Paul R. Giunta/Invision/AP

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CNBlue members (from left) Kang Min-hyuk, Lee Jung-shin and Jung Yong-hwa talk about their new mini-album, X. Photo: courtesy of FNC Entertainment

From left, CNBLUE members Lee Jung-shin, Jung Yong-hwa and Kang Min-hyuk on the cover of the new mini-album X. Photo: courtesy of FNC Entertainment

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Lifestyle

Entertainment

Culture

80s stars Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal, now 63, talk about their ‘official’ live album and concert film, and not being a synth band


80s stars Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal, now 63, talk about their ‘official’ live album and concert film, and not being a synth band.


American cinema

Cinema