My favorites. Great music, intelligent lyrics.
For the new listeners:
3 albums by the original formation of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith.
The Hurting
Songs From The Big Chair
The Seeds of Love
Post-breakup, by Roland Orzabal under the Tears for Fears name:
Tears Rolls Down (greatest hits compilation)
Elemental
Saturnine Martial & Lunatic (B-Sides)
Raoul and The Kings of Spain
Roland Orzabal solo:
Tomcats Screaming Outside.
Curt Smith solo:
Soul Onboard
Orzabal and Smith reunite:
Everyone Loves a Happy Ending
Plus a number of new singles and covers they've released on streaming. The duo was working on an album for a couple of years, but seems like Orzabal's wife passing has affected him greatly and it must have been put on hold.
The Hurting is the raw album, where you can pick up on their ambitious that went past simply being another pop synth band. Songs from the Big Chair is just sheer talent - yielding the greatest song of all time, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. The Seeds of Love is lushly produced, and where Orzabal's high ambitions for artistic achievement started to fray the duo's relationship, which ended acrimoniously. From there, Orzabal carried on by himself with mixed critical success although I love the work until they reunited in 2004. Hopefully we will get another album or two soon.
I like all of their work, I hope you do too.
This is amazing, thanks for putting it together.
While you are at it, give a chance to Simple Minds. It's pretty good as well.
I absolutely love Simple Minds, huge fan. Which I suppose doubles down on it being weird that I hadn't ever gotten in to Tears for Fears, being vaguely similar.