Everyone Asked About Tears for Fears

Collins Kilgore: My favorite record? Lately it’s been The Hurting, the debut album of Tears For Fears.

It’s a weird record. A commercial success despite its dark themes and, in the singles, lacking what I think of as real pop choruses. The eighties were a strange and rapidly evolving time musically, but at the same time also in the pop psychology movements that had been gaining in appeal since the sixties.

You can hear that strangeness and searching throughout The Hurting. Roland Orzabal decided to make Tears For Fears’ debut pop album about primal scream and repressed memory therapy. Very intense and controversial stuff.  It’s a record about trying and failing to deal with deep psychological trauma, all wrapped up in this edgy but polished pop facade.

Several of the songs are sung from the perspective of a child addressing their parent, begging them to change before the scars set in. I’m glad ‘Pale Shelter’ and ‘Mad World’ still get a lot of attention. But I also think ‘Suffer the Children’ and ‘Memories Fade’ are among the best on the record. They each use this very powerful voice from two perspectives. One from the outside. Detached. Observing the parental failings.  The other from within the damaged persona, and Roland really wails it.