“Lorde’s version is more in tune with the lyrics than our version”: Tears For Fears’ Curt Smith on his favourite covers of the band’s songs

Tears For Fears have had many different waves of success since the duo formed in Bath over four decades ago, but perhaps one of the most rewarding (apart from, you know, when you sell millions upon millions of records and become extremely rich in the process) is the phase a few years ago when a new generation of game-changing artists held them up as a primary inspiration. It signalled a seismic sea-change in how Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith were perceived by the wider world, and also how they perceived themselves. One day they were new wave, synth-pop veterans watching their crowd grow older with them, and the next they were one of the planet’s most influential acts of all time. Quite a decent turnaround, we’re sure they’d agree. Speaking to this writer a few years ago, Smith marvelled at the sheer amount of cover versions of Tears For Fears tracks out there and tried to pick his favourites.

“I guess my favourite is the Lorde version of Everybody Wants To Rule The World, because it’s so dark,” Smith said. “It’s interesting to me, because with that and actually with Gary Jules and Michael Andrews’ version of Mad World, weirdly their recordings are actually more in tune with the lyrics than our versions are. Normally what happens with us is we have dark lyrics with actually quite bright pop songs or they’re more up tempo.”

Smith said that his other choice cuts were hearing Tears For Fears songs being sampled by trailblazing hip-hop stars. “It’s always gratifying when someone uses a sample from (their 1983 debut album) The Hurting which in America wasn’t big, yet the samples from The Hurting were what Kanye picked, what Drake picked, and these are young modern artists in a different musical genre than us, picking samples from a 1983 record by two young white boys. In that sense, I find that very interesting and gratifying.”

It has got to the stage, Smith said, where some people don’t know who did the song first and who’s covering who. “My kids’ nanny came to see us play live because she was looking after the kids, she came to see us play live just outside of LA,” he recalled. “We played Memories Fade and it was one of the first times we’d reintroduced it back into the set and she came up to me afterwards said ‘you did that version of the Kanye song, that’s fantastic!’ And I’m like, ‘Actually…’!

Listen to Lorde’s version of the Tears For Fears classic here and see if you agree with Smith:

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he’s interviewed some of the world’s biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.