New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The Hurting, the debut studio album by
Tears for Fears, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. To celebrate, it will be reissued via UMe 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 7th, 1983, The Hurting featured three classic top-five hit singles: "Mad World," "Change," and "Pale Shelter." The album peaked at No. 1 on the UK 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. 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.
Roland Orzabal "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" & 'Watch Me Bleed' produced by Mike Howlett.
TEARS FOR FEARS - THE HURTING HALF-SPEED MASTER LP:
Side One
The Hurting
Mad World
Pale Shelter
Ideas As Opiates
Memories Fade
Side Two
Suffer The Children
Watch Me Bleed
Change
The Prisoner
Start Of The Breakdown
TEARS FOR FEARS THE HURTING - DOLBY ATMOS MIX BY STEVEN WILSON:
The Hurting
Mad World
Pale Shelter
Ideas As Opiates
Memories Fade
Suffer The Children
Watch Me Bleed
Change
The Prisoner
Start Of The Breakdown
TEARS FOR FEARS THE HURTING - LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SUPERDELUXEEDITION.COM EXCLUSIVE:
Dolby Atmos Mix by Steven Wilson
5.1 Mix by Steven Wilson
Instrumental Mix by Steven Wilson (Stereo)
Original 1985
Stereo Mix
The Hurting
Mad World
Pale Shelter
Ideas As Opiates
Memories Fade
Suffer The Children
Watch Me Bleed
Change
The Prisoner
Start Of The Breakdown
Bonus Tracks (Previously Unreleased)
Mad World (Mike Howlett Version)
Watch Me Bleed (Mike Howlett Version)
Tears For Fears - Roland Orzabal (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Curt 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 cognisant 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 United States. 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 #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 UK 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, UK.
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.
