Tears for Fears Are Back With One of Their Best Albums Yet

Album Review #5 of 100: ‘The Tipping Point’ by Tears for Fears

The duo Tears for Fears, featuring Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, released their seventh studio album, The Tipping Point, on February 25, 2022. It’s their first studio album since Everybody Loves A Happy Ending in 2004.

In what I think is a fun (and probably planned) coincidence, The Tipping Point was released exactly 37 years, to the day, after the group’s second album, Songs from the Big Chair, which was released on February 25, 1985.

I first became aware of Tears for Fears after their debut album, The Hurting, came out in 1983. While I enjoyed the couple of songs from it that had music videos that were played frequently on MTV, I didn’t become a superfan of the band until Songs from the Big Chair came out. That album contained three incredibly popular songs, all of which still frequently get heavy airplay on “oldies” stations/streaming platforms: “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” “Shout,” and “Head Over Heels.”

Tears for Fears’ next album, The Seeds of Love, was released in 1989. Curt Smith left the band shortly afterward. Even though he was essentially a solo act at that point, Roland Orzabal went on to release two more albums under the Tears for Fears name: Elemental in 1993 and Raoul and the Kings of Spain in 1995.

Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith reunited for the Everybody Loves A Happy Ending album and have done many tours together since then. There were plans over the ensuing years to record a new album together, but several things prevented them from doing so — the saddest of which was the very long illness of Roland Orazabal’s wife Caroline, who passed away in 2017.

Tears for Fears announced in October of 2021 that they would be releasing a new album called The Tipping Point in 2022. When the announcement was made, they also released the title track as a single and music video.

The Tipping Point

This was followed by the release of two more singles and music videos prior to the album’s release: “No Small Thing” in December 2021 and “Break The Man” in January 2021.

No Small Thing

Break The Man

As a longtime fan of Tears for Fears, I was excited when the news was announced about the new album. I was then very happy when the three above songs were released as singles. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed each of them.

But then my guard went up a little bit and I got a little worried. I had thoughts such as, “The first three songs are great, but how are the rest of them going to be? Are things going to go downhill from here? Did they release the best songs first and now the rest of them are going to disappoint me?”

I listened to The Tipping Point album on the morning that it was released. I have a self-imposed policy of listening to an album at least three times before reviewing it, so I listened to The Tipping Point two more times that day.

So, were my fears warranted and I didn’t care for the album as much as I’d hoped to?

No — not at all. Quite the opposite. I didn’t stop at just those three listens I mentioned above. I’m currently writing this review on February 28, 2022 — three days after hearing The Tipping Point for my first time. Since then, I’ve listened to the album in its entirety probably seven or eight times.

I enjoyed the album right from the first time I heard it a few days ago and I can honestly say that I love it more and more with each additional listen.

The music on it is fantastic. While it has the band’s “classic” sound, it goes a bit beyond that, in my opinion. To me, this album doesn’t sound like Tears for Fears is trying to replicate how they sounded in the 1980s — but it also doesn’t sound like Tears for Fears is trying to run too far away from how they sounded back then.

This is Tears for Fears in 2022 — and they sound exactly how I want them to sound.

The Tipping Point has both a “classic” and “new” sound to it. The music, vocals, and lyrics throughout the album are wonderful. My favorite songs on The Tipping Point seem to change each time I listen to it.

I love the three I posted above, and here are three more that I’m pretty crazy about:

Rivers of Mercy

Master Plan

Stay

Here is the entire album on Spotify:

My favorite album by Tears for Fears has always been The Seeds of Love. Although I love, to varying degrees, all the other albums the band released after that album from 1989, none of them grabbed ahold of me as powerfully as The Seeds of Love did.

Until now, that is.

The Tipping Point is the Tears for Fears album I’ve been craving for over 30 years. In fact, I think it’s now my third favorite album by them — right after The Seeds of Love and Songs from the Big Chair.

Out of a possible 5 stars, I give it…drumroll, please…5 stars!

I wrote this article as part of the ‘100 New Albums In 2022 Challenge.’ The challenge was created by writer Nia Simone McLeod. Others participating in the challenge are Kevin Alexander, Rob Janicke, Mary DeVries, Nicole Brown, and M. Berg. Click on their names to be transported to their wonderful words.

If you like Tears for Fears, here’s another article I wrote about them:

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