Tears for Fears , sometimes abbreviated as TFF and more rarely T4F , is a British pop rock band from Bath, England. Formed by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith in 1981, the group, initially affiliated with the New Wave movement, has sold nearly 30 million albums worldwide (of which nearly 10 million for the United States alone> and more than a million and a half in France>). His three studio albums published in the 1980s alone accumulate nearly 20 million copies sold.
The boom period for Tears for Fears spans ten years, from 1983 to 1993. After this date and this decade of success, the formation suffers a certain decline in audience; during his career, the group has had several global hits, the most emblematic of which remain undoubtedly Shout, Everybody Wants to Rule the World and Sowing the Seeds of Love as well as their first success, Mad World .
Group formed in 1981> in Bath (England) by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith (both born in 1961), wrongly considered during its first years of existence as a duo while the two friends who know each other since adolescence are are quickly joined by two other active members, Ian Stanley and Manny Elias. But if one still holds to this notion of duet, one can say that during the years 1984-1986, the true "creative pair" was rather constituted by Orzabal / Stanley. In fact, he is expanding his activities in parallel with Tears for Fears and after his departure, producing international artists such as Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, Tori Amos, The Human League or a-ha and The Pretenders>.
At the beginning, before becoming successful on a large scale with Tears for Fears, Orzabal and Smith had integrated in the late 1970s (when they were not yet 18 years old) a group that was unfortunately assimilated to the ska movement called Graduate> , in reference to the film The Graduate (in the original version), whose band often played on stage one of the flagship songs of the soundtrack, Mrs. Robinson, originally performed by Simon and Garfunkel.
