Tears For Fears Announce New Album ‘The Tipping Point’ & Share Title Track

Tears For Fears will issue their first album in 17 years, The Tipping Point, on February 25 via Concord Records. The 1980s hit-making duo of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith also shared the LP’s title track.

The Tipping Point follows Tears For Fears’ 2004 reunion album, Everybody Loves A Happy Ending. Orzabal and Smith teamed back up with longtime collaborator Charlton Pettus as well as producers and songwriters Sacha Skarbek and Florian Reutter to record the new album, which “is a song cycle reflecting many of the personal and professional tipping points the pair — and the world — have faced throughout the last seventeen years,” press materials for The Tipping Point noted.

As the press release suggested, the journey to the duo’s first album in nearly two decades wasn’t always easy. Tears For Fears began making the record with some of today’s hit songwriters at the behest of their previous management company. But tensions quickly arose, as Orzabal explains. “Eventually, that pressure and tension divided us not just from our management, but from one another too,” he said.

Orzabal continued:

“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.”

“If that balance doesn’t work on a Tears For Fears album, the whole thing just doesn’t work,” Smith added. “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.”

To remedy the situation, Tears For Fears switched management and things began to look up. “Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, we felt like we had someone in our corner who understood what we were trying to do,” Orzabal said. “We felt like we had somebody on our side. It was the first time in a long time that we decided – we have to do this.”

Tears For Fears previewed the album with “The Tipping Point.” A co-write between Pettus and Orzabal, the latter drew inspiration from a tipping point in his own life and the song “captures the grief of watching someone you love lose their long-standing battle with disease,’ the press release noted.

“The Tipping Point” arrived with an accompanying video helmed by renowned music video director Matt Mahurin (Joni Mitchell, U2, Metallica). Watch it below:

The Tipping Point Tracklist:

1. No Small Thing
2. The Tipping Point
3. Long, Long, Long Time
4. Break The Man
5. My Demons
6. Rivers Of Mercy
7. Please Be Happy
8. Master Plan
9. End Of Night
10. Stay

Additional Tracks On The Deluxe CD Edition

1. Let It All Evolve
2. Secret Location
3. Shame (Cry Heaven)