Being baptized with a name inspired by a phrase from the psychotherapy book ‘Prisoners of Pain’ by the American psychologist Arthur Janov – whose most famous patient was John Lennon – was almost forcing oneself to talk about serious things during the rest. of his career. And you can say that Tears for Fears They’ve been doing it all this time, forty-three years now, no less. It is true that twenty of them were immobile in the recording field, between ‘Everybody Loves a Happy Ending’ (2004) and ‘The Tipping Point’ (2022), but since they won the very prestigious Ivor Novello musical composition award for all their songbook in 2021, they have come up big and want to return to the club of great stadium hit-makers to which they once belonged.
With an unprecedented promotional offensive since their golden days, the veteran British duo has just released their first official live album, ‘Songs For A Nervous Planet’with four unreleased songs, which in turn is the soundtrack of the film-concert that has also just been released in theaters, ‘Tears For Fears Live (A Tipping Point Film)’recorded at the picturesque FirstBank Amphitheater at Graystone Quarry in Franklin, Tennessee. “With this film many people are going to discover how good we are live, not like in the last concert we gave in Spain, at the 4Ever festival in Valencia, which was the worst of our career,” says singer and guitarist Roland Orzabal. without the slightest hint of joking.
The idea to make the film arose, curiously, thanks to the recordings that his fans made with their cell phones at his concerts. «We knew that we gave a good show on all levels, but we had never seen ourselves from the outside, and when reviewing the videos that people have been uploading to YouTube in recent years, we were quite surprised. That’s why, when they offered it to us, we said yes instantly,” says Orzabal. «In addition, something also happened that personally prompted me to do it. A friend from my childhood, with whom I had my first group, came to see us with his girlfriend recently. And when the performance ended and I met him, he looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Man, you are a world-class band.'”
Having a repertoire of songs as colossal as ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’, ‘Shout’, ‘Head Over Heels’, ‘Advice for the Young at Heart’ or ‘Break It Down Again’, you’d have to play really badly to not leaving the public as ecstatic as moved inside. Because as we said at the beginning, banality has no place in the lyrical ideology of a group that spoke about topics such as mental health (‘Mad World’), machismo (‘Woman in chains’) or female empowerment (‘Break the man’) before almost everyone in pop.
“I don’t think they are issues that have gotten worse since then, in fact I think we have improved a lot,” says singer and bassist Curt Smith. «What happened before is that there were not so many people who were diagnosed with psychological disorders. Now, with more diagnoses, it seems that there is an explosion of mental illnesses, but this may not be the case and something that has always been hidden is simply coming to the surface. In fact, more diagnoses, more treatments, which leads us to a healthier environment. When I was thirteen or fourteen years old I wish I had had the help and understanding that our children have with these types of issues. What they do have much worse than us, however, are expectations due to social networks. Letting yourself be carried away by the obsession with comparing yourself to others is something extremely toxic.
They also leave no room for frivolity in the titles, such as ‘Songs For A Nervous Planet’. “It is a good title to define the current situation, but the world is not worse than at other times in the history of humanity,” Orzabal clarifies. «We are old enough to know that. Actually, the name is taken from the book ‘Notes on a nervous planet’, by Matt Haig, in which he talks about having an argument on Twitter with a guy who is three thousand miles away. Now, we read the news on social media, and what they offer us is polarization. Because that is what generates the most clicks. The real problem is that the traditional media has realized this, and has begun to reproduce it. How do we now get good, verified and truthful information? It is almost impossible, because they will always present it to you with polarizing intentions. In that sense Haig makes a kind of joke in his book. He says: “Mental health news makes me very anxious.” Therefore, music is, in my opinion, very important right now. The beauty of music is the most beautiful escape from polarization. Let’s turn off the cell phones, and let her guide us.
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