Tears For Fears announce first album since 2004

Shout, shout, let it all out: Tears For Fears are back! The synth-pop duo is releasing its first album since 2004's Everybody Loves A Happy Ending. The new record, The Tipping Point, arrives on February 25, 2022 on Concord Records.

In a press release, Roland Orzabal says, “Before everything went so right with this album, everything first had to go wrong, it took years, but something happens when we put our heads together. We’ve got this balance, this push-me-pull-you thing—and it works really well.”

Curt Smith adds, “If that balance doesn’t work on a Tears For Fears album, the whole thing just doesn’t work. To put it in simple terms, a Tears For Fears record and what people perceive to be the sound of Tears For Fears—is the stuff we can both agree on.”

Tears For Fears released the lead single, that shares a title with the record. Orzabal addresses his grief after the 2017 death of his wife, Caroline, in the track, singing, “Life is cruel, life is tough/Life is crazy, then it all turns too dust/Will you let them out?/Will you let them in?/Will you ever know when it’s the tipping point?”

“The line in the song says, ‘Will you ever know when it’s the Tipping Point?’ meaning, will you ever know when a person has crossed that threshold from life to death when you cannot even perceive that ‘vague and distant void’ as it’s described in the lyric,” Orzabal tells Rolling Stone about the song. “I have to admit that even in March 2016 when I was read the riot act by doctors about Caroline possibly not making it through the weekend, I was still in denial. 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.”