Tears for Fears Go Back to Basics With New Song ‘No Small Thing’
Tears for Fears have shared the new video for “No Small Thing,” the second single and opening track off the band’s first new album in 17 years, The Tipping Point.
As Tears for Fears previously told Rolling Stone, after years of false starts and failed collaborations when recording their new album, “No Small Thing” marked a breakthrough for the band, as Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith sat down in a room together to write music for the first time since their teen years.
“In early 2020, Curt and I sat down together with just a couple of acoustic guitars. The first time in decades. We needed a meeting of minds, a coming together psychically. We were literally going back to the drawing board looking for some depth, heart, and soul with which to complete our album,” Orzabal said in a new statement. “Curt came up with this simple folk/country riff, a little bit Dylan, a little bit Johnny Cash, and then we were off. It was the complete opposite of what we had been trying to do for many years — searching for the elusive, modern hit single. We felt suddenly unencumbered, free if you like, no longer worrying about the market, about success, but drawing on influences from our childhoods. It was at this point that the whole album started opening up. ‘No Small Thing’ was the key, the thing that turned a red light green.”
Smith added, “‘No Small Thing’ feels like it could have been a song from a Seventies or Sixties acoustic folk album with how the track starts. The fact that we felt confident enough to go from there to the end of the song to where it’s just absolute mayhem speaks to that sense of freedom, and that’s our comfort zone musically.”
Tears for Fears previously released the title track from The Tipping Point, their first LP since 2004’s Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. The album — available to preorder now in a limited-edition pink vinyl version — arrives Feb. 25 via Concord Records. The group will also embark on a 2022 tour in support of the LP.
