Tears For Fears celebrate 40 years of 'The Hurting'

Releasing May 12 and available for preorder now here

“The Hurting,” the debut studio album by Tears For Fears, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. To celebrate, it will be reissued as an Abbey Road Half-Speed Mastered vinyl and as a newly created Dolby Atmos mix by renowned artist and mixer Steven Wilson. The Dolby Atmos mix, along with a 5.1 mix, an instrumental mix, the original album master, and two previously unheard tracks, will also be released as a limited-edition standalone Blu-ray disc exclusively via superdeluxedition.com.

Initially released on March 7, 1983, “The Hurting” featured three classic top-five hit singles: “Mad World,” “Change” and “Pale Shelter.” The album peaked at No. 1 on the U.K. albums chart in its second week of release and was certified Gold by the BPI within three weeks, staying in the charts for over a year and reaching Platinum status in early 1985. The album also entered the Top 40 in several countries, including Canada, Germany and Australia.

A press release explained, “ ‘The Hurting’ was an incredibly influential album in America, and its influence can be felt in the work of The Weeknd, Nine Inch Nails, Arcade Fire, Smashing Pumpkins, and the massive hit version of ‘Mad World’ by Michael Andrews & Gary Jules from the cult movie ‘Donnie Darko.’

“ ‘The Hurting,’ written solely by band member Roland Orzabal, is a loose concept album focusing on themes of childhood psychological trauma and Arthur Janov’s Primal Scream therapy, the theories behind which gave the band their name. Despite its dark subject matter, the album was a huge commercial success and continues to resonate with younger audiences.”

Speaking last year, Tears For Fears co-founder Curt Smith remarked, “We only noticed it in the last couple of years when we played Bonnaroo, which is ostensibly a far younger festival. We expected maybe a thousand people if we were lucky, and it was stretched past the tent overhang and went all the way back. I’m looking at the front of the audience, and they’re all far younger than me, and they’re all singing all the lyrics to every song from ‘The Hurting.’ It was shocking to me. When you look at it retrospectively, it makes sense because the album was written when we were that age. Those lyrics resonate with a younger audience. But that was when I noticed a shift when we started playing festivals and noticed there was a younger audience we were gaining in America.”

Musically, the album was informed by Roland & Curt’s shared love of “Remain In Light” by Talking Heads, David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters And Super Creeps,” David Byrne and Brian Eno’s “My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts,” and especially Peter Gabriel’s untitled third album, aka “Melt.”

Orzabal said, “It’s a very consistent album with its own distinct personality. I’m not sure if we’ve made a more emotional record since, but I’d like to think we’ve hit higher musical peaks.”

The new Half-Speed Remaster of “The Hurting” was done by respected audio engineer Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios using a half-speed mastering technique that produces a superior vinyl cut. The Dolby Atmos mix, which remixes the album into spatial, three-dimensional audio, has been created by the artist Steven Wilson who has previously remixed Tears For Fears “Songs From The Big Chair,” “The Seeds Of Love” and “The Tipping Point” into spatial audio formats.

As well as streaming, the Dolby Atmos mix will be available as a standalone Blu-ray disc featuring Wilson’s Atmos Mix, his 5.1 mix, and his stereo instrumental mix as well the original 1985 stereo master and two recently rediscovered unreleased versions of “Mad World” and “Watch Me Bleed” produced by Mike Howlett.

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More About Tears For Fears

Tears For Fears – Orzabal (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Smith (vocals, bass, keyboards) – formed in Bath, England, in 1981. With 30 million albums sold worldwide, performing to countless sold-out audiences, and winning various awards, the band represents an inimitable intersection of pop palatability, clever and cognizant lyricism, guitar bombast, and new-wave innovation.

Their 1983 debut, “The Hurting,” yielded anthems such as “Mad World,” “Change” and “Pale Shelter,” reaching RIAA Gold status in the U.S.

1985’s “Songs from the Big Chair” became a watershed moment for the group and music at large. Boasting the signature BRIT Award-winning “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” “Shout,” “Head over Heels,” “Mothers Talk” and “I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording),” it went quintuple-Platinum and captured No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200. Slant dubbed it one of “The Best Albums of the 1980s,” it was featured in the book “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die,” and Consequence of Sound awarded it a rare A+ rating in a 20-year retrospective.

1989’s “Seeds of Love” proved to be Orzabal and Smith’s last collaboration together until “Everybody Loves A Happy Ending” in 2004, which rekindled the creative fire between them. The band engaged in a three-year touring whirlwind across North America, Japan, South Korea, Manila and South America, beginning in 2010.

2013 saw them return with their first recorded music in a decade: a cover of Arcade Fire’s “Ready to Start.” The band returned once more in 2017 with the “Rule The World” best-of collection, which once more catapulted the band back to the upper echelon of the U.K. album charts.

The duo’s DNA remains embedded within three generations of artists on both subtle and overt levels. Quietly casting a shadow over rock, hip-hop, electronic dance music, indie and beyond, The Weeknd infused “Pale Shelter” into Starboy’s “Secrets,” David Guetta sampled “Change” for “Always,” and Drake utilized “Ideas as Opiates” as the foundation for “Lust For Life,” while Ally Brooke Hernandez, Adam Lambert and Gary Jules recorded popular covers of “Mad World,” and Disturbed took on “Shout” – and that’s only to name a few. Lorde cut a haunting cover of “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” for the soundtrack of the blockbuster “The Hunger Games – Catching Fire,” which Tears For Fears gleefully would use as intro music live and thus bring everything full circle.

Meanwhile, classic songs figure prominently everywhere, from “The Wire” and “Donnie Darko” to “Straight Outta Compton” and “Mr. Robot.” Long before they became a cultural cornerstone, Tears For Fears simply consisted of two school friends growing up in Bath, Somerset, U.K..

With the release of their first album in almost 20 years, “The Tipping Point,” in 2022, the 40th anniversary of “The Hurting,” and with more touring on the horizon, Orzabal and Smith remain as loud as ever while yet another generation gets ready to “Shout” with them all over again.