Born on 24 June: Curt Smith, one of the two driving forces behind Tears For Fears

He was born in Bath (Somerset) in 1961 and sings a large part of the English duo's biggest hits,

Curt Smith raised havoc along with Roland Orzabal from their teenage years in Bath, the venerable spa town in Somerset. Sharing a passion for music, they decided to experiment together, first forming Graduate, a ska band influenced by the emergence of the 2-Tone label and bands such as The Selecter and The Specials. You can still fairly easily find "Acting My Age", their only album, released in 1980.

The Tears For Fears adventure began just a few months after their split and came to fruition in 1983 with the album "The Hurting", preceded, from 1981, by a handful of singles such as "Suffer The Children" (1981) and "Change" and "Mad World" (1982), which created quite a buzz, as we'd say today. Curt immediately began sharing songwriting duties with Roland and took on the lead vocals for the three singles released in 1982, including "Mad World", which laid the foundations for their rising popularity. "Songs From The Big Chair" (1985) and "The Seeds Of Love" (1989) propelled the duo to stardom, or to put it another way, to the top of the American Billboard chart. Curt also took charge of singing "Everybody Wants To Rule The World", another of their major hits. But within Tears For Fears, Roland applied this maxim to himself, and tensions eventually became hard to bear. Frustrated, Curt Smith ended up walking away in 1991.

For nearly a decade, the two former best friends only communicated via lawyers, before eventually ironing out their differences and putting a lid on their respective egos. In the meantime, the bassist and singer made the most of this break to release a few solo records such as "Soul On Board" (1993) and then formed Mayfield with guitarist Charlton Pettus, though without ever attracting mass attention.

With typically British humour, the two mates eventually reunited to record the aptly named "Everybody Loves A Happy Ending", which, even without a global hit, proved that they clearly make their best music together. From then on, rather than risking burning out again, Curt and Roland made sure to allow themselves personal breathing spaces. As a result, they waited a full eighteen years before heading back into the studio together for "The Tipping Point", released in 2022. Curt Smith thus has had ample time to refine other projects, such as "Deceptively Heavy" (2013), The Social Media Project (with artists he met through social media), and even, in 2024, a surprising cover of "La poupée qui fait non" by Michel Polnareff with his daughter Diva. It was during the Covid-19 pandemic, in April 2020, that the two first collaborated publicly, performing a moving version of "Mad World" on Facebook.

(MH with Stéphane Soupart – Photo = © Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Curt Smith with Tears For Fears on the Apocalypse stage in Brussels (Belgium) on 18 March 1983