Tears For Fears have had many different waves of success since the duo formed in Bath over four decades ago, but perhaps one of the most rewarding (apart from, you know, when you sell millions upon millions of records and become extremely rich in the process) is the phase a few years ago when a new generation of game-changing artists held them up as a primary inspiration. It signalled a seismic sea-change in how Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith were perceived by the wider world, and also how they perceived themselves. One day they were new wave, synth-pop veterans watching their crowd grow older with them, and the next they were one of the planet’s most influential acts of all time. Quite a decent turnaround, we’re sure they’d agree. Speaking to this writer a few years ago, Smith marvelled at the sheer amount of cover versions of Tears For Fears tracks out there and tried to pick his favourites.
“I guess my favourite is the Lorde version of Everybody Wants To Rule The World, because it’s so dark,” Smith said. “It’s interesting to me, because with that and actually with Gary Jules and Michael Andrews’ version of Mad World, weirdly their recordings are actually more in tune with the lyrics than our versions are. Normally what happens with us is we have dark lyrics with actually quite bright pop songs or they’re more up tempo.”
