Tears for Fears, suffering and tragedy generate great pop music

Tears for Fears, new song “Astronaut” released

As already announced, Tears for Fears will release the live album “Songs for a nervous planet” on October 25th, which will include 18 live songs plus four new studio tracks. Of the latter, after “The girl that I call home”, the song “Astronaut” is now available as a new preview.

The album, which will contain other bonus songs “Say goodbye to mum and dad” and “Emily said”, is also preceded by the live version of “Head over heels”, a song originally included in the album “Songs from the big chair” by 1985.

In introducing the new “Astronaut,” Curt Smith explained: “Emotionally it’s about this kid who doesn’t feel at home here and wants to be an astronaut floating in space. A lot of people identify with that emotion of the song, that sense of alienation.” He added: “Once we realized that we were going to end up doing more than one new track for this album, Roland Orzabal sent me the original recording of ‘Astronaut’ and I’d forgotten how good of a song it was because it gives you a sense of release. It’s a horrible comparison but it’s the sorbet between courses where you can just take a breath and float away that’s the feeling the song gives.”

The recordings included in “Songs for a nervous planet”, whose cover has raised discontent, document the series of concerts that began in May 2022 after the release of “The Tipping point” (here our review), the first album of unreleased material of the group formed by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith since “Everybody loves a happy ending” in 2004. The tour was then extended with the “Tipping Point Tour Part II” in April 2023.

Along with the live album, Tears for Fears also announced a concert film recorded in the summer of 2023 at the FirstBank Amphitheater at Graystone Quarry in Franklin, Tennessee. The project, called “Tears for Fears Live: A Tipping Point Film”, will debut in over 1,100 cinemas around the world on October 24th and will also be shown in cinemas on October 26th.