Songfacts®:

• In the early 2010s, Roland Orzabal's wife, Caroline, developed alcohol-related dementia, and he spent the next five years as her caretaker. She died in the summer of 2017.
  
  This fiery, yet intimate song finds Orzabal recalling sitting in Caroline's hospital room when she was very ill. He looked across the ward at other patients, wondering when they would be more dead than alive.
  
  Life is crazy, then it all turns to dust
  Will you let them out?
  Will you let them in?
  Will you ever know when it's the tipping point, the tipping point
  
  Orzabel told Rolling Stone the lyric finds him questioning whether he will recognize the "Tipping Point," meaning, "when a person has crossed that threshold from life to death."
• This the lead single and title track of The Tipping Point, Tears For Fears' first album since 2004's Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. The record is a song cycle reflecting many of the personal and professional tipping points Orzabal, his Tears For Fears partner Curt Smith and the world in general have faced between the two albums.
• Orzabal wrote the song with writer and producer Charlton Pettus. Tears For Fears co-produced it with Adele producer Sacha Skarbek, whom Orzabal met on an Ivor Novello Awards voting panel. Florian Reutter also contributed to the production.
• Matt Mahurin (Joni Mitchell, U2, Metallica) directed the song's music video. Inspired by Orzabel's grief over losing Caroline, the clip depicts the imbalance of death and disease.