Top 10 Best Songs by Tears for Fears

The perfect pop song. The "shuffle" beat and guitar licks give it a riding, driving feel. It sounds like freedom. The lyrics are cynical ("Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure"), but the music is euphoric. It captures the spirit of the Cold War era and the desire for power, but wrapped in a golden melody. An evergreen.

A breathtaking duet with Oleta Adams. The song builds very slowly. Phil Collins plays drums that kick in halfway with enormous force. It's about women's oppression and feminism. The emotion in the voices of Orzabal and Adams is palpable. It's a soul song of epic proportions, deeply moving and musically perfect.

One of the most powerful anthems of the eighties. The beat is heavy and slow, the synthesizers are dark. "Shout, shout, let it all out." It's a song about protest and making your voice heard (originally inspired by primal therapy). It's compelling, hypnotic and grand. A song that forces you to scream along.

Their tribute to The Beatles and the sixties. It's a psychedelic masterpiece full of trumpets, orchestras and tempo changes. It's a call for love and political change ("Kick out the Style!"). The production is overwhelmingly rich. An epic song that sounds like a sunny day full of flowers and hope.

A complex pop song that starts with a stumbling piano intro. It's about awkward, desperate love. The end of the song is a beautiful multi-voice choir. The atmosphere is romantic but also slightly manic. It shows how skilled the band was at building musical layers.

An acoustic guitar-driven song with melancholic lyrics about indifferent parents ("You don't give me love"). The melody is beautiful and the chorus is catchy. It's an early example of their theme of 'primal pain', wrapped in a perfect pop song. The atmosphere is dreamy and sad at once.

The only song on the Seeds of Love album sung by Curt Smith. It's soft, jazzy and soulful. The message is simple: listen to your feelings and don't become cynical as you age. The production is warm and polished. A lovely, relaxed song that feels like a sunny Sunday afternoon.

An early song with a very recognizable marimba riff. It's nervous, rhythmic and typically new wave. It's about change and the end of a relationship. The atmosphere is cool and somewhat distant, which reinforces the pain of the lyrics. A unique sound that put the band on the map.

From the period when Roland Orzabal went solo. It's a bombastic, energetic song with a powerful drum part. The lyrics are a stream of consciousness, full of images and metaphors. The melody in the chorus is grand and sweeping. It proves that Orzabal was also capable of writing epic pop songs without Smith.

Their first big hit. A dark, minimalist synthpop song about depression and alienation. "The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had." Later it became known as a slow ballad (by Gary Jules), but the original has a nervous energy that perfectly captures the despair of the teenage years. Timeless and iconic.