Tears For Fears have announced they will release a 40th anniversary edition of their debut album The Hurting, originally released back in 1983, through Virgin/UMR on. May 12.
The album, a conceptual piece about of childhood psychological trauma and Arthur Janov’s Primal Scream therapy, the theories behind which gave the band their name, featured three top-five hit singles: Mad World, Change and Pale Shelter. The album peaked at No. 1 on the UK Album 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 new version will be reissued as an Abbey Road Half Speed Mastered vinyl and as a newly created Dolby Atmos mix by Steven Wilson. The Dolby Atmos mix, along with a 5.1 mix, an instrumental mix, the original album master and two previously unheard tracks.
“It’s a very consistent album with its own distinct personality," says Roland Orzabal, who wrote the album. "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.”
“We only noticed it in the last couple years, when we played Bonnaroo, which is ostensibly a far younger festival," adds Curt Smith. "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 we wrote it 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.”
