Tears for Fears is coming to Chicago with tour for ‘The Tipping Point,’ their first new studio album in decades

Tears for Fears was one of those bands that, for an era or so, helped define popular music, were part of the sound of a moment — that era of course being the ‘80s. Their music and songs, “Shout,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” et al, were more or less inescapable on the radio at a time when people actually got their music from the radio.

Their debut album, “The Hurting” in 1983, reached the top of the UK Albums Chart; their second was “Songs from the Big Chair” in 1985 and included the aforementioned “Shout” and “Rule the World.” It was a lot for a young band in their early 20s — Tears for Fears has most always consisted of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith with past members including drummer Manny Elias and Ian Stanley, though not long after the release of their platinum-selling third album, “The Seeds of Love” in 1989, Orzabal and Smith split up.

Orzabal limped along solo for a few years until the two reunited somewhere around the turn of the millennium, but of course they never returned to that same kind of fame. In the 1980s, their world tours took them to London arenas, Rio de Janeiro, Radio City Music Hall in New York; in 1996 Tears for Fears played the Vic in Chicago with Amanda Marshall. Reportedly, they’ve since been asked to headline ‘80s retro shows but largely turned them down.

It wasn’t their thing, they’ve said, they didn’t want to be an ‘80s band.

But then again, turning over and joining this generation hasn’t proven to be their thing, either.

Tears for Fears has a new album out, “The Tipping Point,” released in February via Concord Records, their seventh studio album and the first in nearly two decades. They’re touring behind it in the U.S. this summer, coming to the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in Tinley Park on June 16; tickets are on sale now via tearsforfears.com.

When they first started recording, their (then) management company asked them to collaborate with younger artists to adopt a more current (and commercial) sound. It didn’t stick, said Smith, speaking recently with the Tribune by phone before the band kicked off its tour.

“We were game, going in. It just didn’t work out, to put it bluntly,” he said of the initial project. “We actually had about 20 tracks. But (those tracks) were a lot of attempts at hit songs and that’s just not what we do. We had to recognize that. We don’t want to make hit songs, we want to make albums.”

An album is a different kind of project, he said, it’s a musical story with a beginning and end.

The earlier collaborations “just didn’t fit, there was an overriding feeling. It didn’t sound like Tears for Fears,” Smith said. “And there were other things. The rise of the far-right worldwide, Trump in America, Black Lives Matter. We wanted to respond to all of those things.”

Which is just the sort of lip service pop musicians often pay to current events, but Tears for Fears albums have often reached for that kind of social relevancy in the past; “The Hurting” was more or less a concept album focusing on themes of child abuse, psychological trauma and depression, songs Orzabal wrote in response to his own experiences. The band’s name was inspired by the theories of American psychologist Arthur Janov, the creator of primal therapy — the notion of replacing “fears” with “tears.”

Some of the songs on “The Tipping Point,” including the title single, were inspired by the death of Orzabal’s wife in 2017, who he had been with since they were teenagers.

Orzabal and Smith started over on the album project in 2020 under new management, keeping only a few tracks from the previous.

If the earlier stuff didn’t sound like Tears for Fears, it begs the question, what does Tears for Fears sound like? If Smith had to describe it?

“Well, as a band, we were two quite different people, we both have very different musical tastes, actually, but where we agree on is what Tears for Fears music is,” he said.

But the sound itself?

“I think a lot of what you’re thinking of has to do with us having two vocalists,” he said, most bands having just the one. “Two distinctive voices, and by that I mean two very different voices. When people listen to us they can hear Roland singing and they can hear me singing. What people don’t realize is on just about every chorus, pretty much all of them, it’s both of us singing. To put it simply Roland is loud and I am soft. I soften his voice, and he gives me more edge.”

Orzabal and Smith are both now 60. Smith says they don’t miss those world-touring fame years and prefer the experience of traveling now.

“It’s far more enjoyable now. Back then it was all a blur. We became very big at a very young age. No one is equipped to handle it at that age,” he said. “We couldn’t walk around, there were fans camped outside the hotel. I’m speaking to you now because I don’t do interviews on the road anymore, I simply don’t. I want to see the city that we play. These were all places I didn’t get to see then.”

Smith can walk around unnoticed now, he said. A few years back, in fact, he was a recurring guest star on the USA Network detective series “Psych,” shot in the Vancouver area, and on an evening out with the cast they ended up in a karaoke bar.

“I thought it would be funny to get up and sing ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World,’” he said. It being a karaoke bar, he said, everyone was just studying song lists, wondering what they’ll sing next. “Nobody even looked up, nobody was paying attention. I sang it in its entirety.”

Along with the touring, Smith said his other goal is to keep growing musically. There are plenty of other singers and bands (Phoebe Bridgers, Bon Iver) he admires and wants to learn from. In arrangements and producing records, Tears for Fears has always strived for a certain kind of depth and complexity — think of the layers and musical evolution in the song “Woman in Chains.”

“That’s something we always wanted even when we were younger,” Smith said, “That painting a musical picture. Then, we were getting very into Peter Gabriel, the Talking Heads. How do they make something that big, that was always something that fascinates me. I’m still like that now.”

Asked to name favorite songs from their catalog, though, Smith’s answer also concedes the power of simplicity — as well as just maybe a little nostalgia for huge crowds and old times.

“Your best songs come to you when you play them live,” he said. “They still take on a whole new meaning. You can feel how the audience is reacting. For example, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” It starts with three notes, it’s just three notes, da dumb da, da dumb da. Here, I’ve got a guitar right here talking to you.”

Smith pauses and plays the opening few bars down the phone. “And those three notes can change the mood of a hundred thousand people. The power of music still astounds me.”

Phoebe Bridgers, is playing in Chicago at Huntington Bank Pavilion on June 4; www.pavilionnortherlyisland.com.

Tears for Fears plays June 16 at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in Tinley Park; tearsforfears.com.

dgeorge@chicagotribune.com