Sparks’ Mael Brothers on U.S. Tour, ‘Drowned in a Sea of Tears’ Single

North America will be “Mad!” about the boys when Sparks embarks on a U.S. and Canada tour this summer, which the duo is announcing today on the heels of previously announced overseas dates for 2025. Also new to global Sparks fans today is a fresh single, “Drowned in a Sea of Tears,” the third song to come out as a teaser for the group’s “Mad!” album, due May 23.

Brothers Ron and Russell Mael, who have been together as musical partners in Sparks for more than 50 years (and obviously “together” generally for a little while longer than that), jumped on separate Zoom calls with Variety to talk about the tour, single and forthcoming album … plus provide an update on an intriguing movie musical project with director John Woo.

The North American shows that were just unveiled begin Sept. 5 at Atlanta’s Tabernacle and wrap up Sept. 30 at the Greek in Los Angeles. (Scroll down to see the full list of domestic and international dates.) After doing a first-time Hollywood Bowl show to conclude their previous tour, the Maels are eager to have this one climax with another hometown show at a nearly equally iconic L.A. venue, this being one they haven’t played in about 40 years.

“Actually, the last time we played the Greek, the opening act was the Red Hot Chili Peppers,” Ron Mael notes. “So, they owe us a favor to come back and support us on this one.”

On the duo’s last tour, they busted out a cult favorite song from the 1970s they’d never even performed before, and promise similar surprises for the longtime faithful this time, along with a healthy selection of songs from the “Mad!” album. Preparing a tour setlist “gets harder and harder,” says Russell Mael. “Now there’s 28 albums out, and we figure a live set is somewhere around 21 or 22 songs — that ends up being a pretty complete show for us. So if you are doing the math, it doesn’t quite add up to everybody getting even one song from every album. So then it becomes a task” to whittle down the selections, clearly. “But we’re gonna do a bunch of songs we’ve never done except for that 21 nights event that we did in London several years back,” when the group performed every one of its albums back to back (a one-time-ever occurrence, sadly).

Their new single is “Drowned in a Sea of Tears,” a song about love gone wrong… and if you’re waiting for the rug to be pulled out in the lyrics, you’ll be waiting a while, because unusually among Sparks songs, the lyrics are completely straightforward. In this case, love sucking is twist enough.

Says Ron, “We do try to have some level of seriousness below the surface of even the song that are humorous, but” leaning into wit “is something I think that sets us apart from most other bands. So it’s almost harder to write the lyrics for a song like ‘Drowned in a Sea of Tears,’ where you are expressing something” sans irony. “I mean, we feel sincere about whatever we do, when we’re working on it or performing it. But I guess in the traditional definition of what sincerity in a song is, this is more that. And so you try to make the lyrics as special as possible without kind of resorting to kind of a slight escape into some kind of humorous direction.”

Adds Russell, “Sometimes there’s humor in Sparks songs, and so that seems to be almost the focus sometimes when people are talking about Sparks lyrics. But even when there are more humorous topics in some of our songs, I think there usually is also hopefully an emotional side to it too, or a counterside. But in ‘Drowning in a Sea of Tears,’ it’s a lost relationship sort of song, and I think even in having something that’s been a tried and true subject in pop music for forever, we can find fresh ways of conveying those sorts of topics too. There is kind of also a real serious tone to the video, but there are some moments in it that have some sort of eerie elements that might make you smile, too — despite someone actually drowning in a sea of tears.”

The previous single to be released from the upcoming album was “JanSport Backback,” which actually no less serious a sentiment, though the title imagery adds an unusual wrinkle. “I walk around a lot, and even when we’re on tour, I kind of try to get out, just to see things, but also just to study the people,” says Ron. “And one thing I noticed even among more fashion-conscious girls was the JanSport backpack… I mean, there are other brands and all that, but that one, the name sounds the best. And for whatever reason, it lent itself to being used as kind of a metaphor for just turning your back on the relationship.”

Says Russell, “We had finished the actual song, but there wasn’t a lyric for it yet. And so Ron came up with that sort of a metaphor for another relationship that is not going the way the person speaking in the song hopes it would be going. And the JanSport backpack is what the guy sees all the time, because his companion is leaving him and all he sees is her back, as she’s walking away from this relationship. In his mind, it’s only a symbol of the kind of departure of his loved one.”

It’s certainly refreshing, after all the country songs that have been written using the sight of a woman’s tail lights as the literal or symbolic image for her leaving, to come up with something as novel as the sight of a once-beloved partner disappearing into a sea of backpacks instead of just hitting the highway. “Yes, it’s hard to find those symbols from the rear,” laughs Russell.

The first single to have been released from the forthcoming full-length project was the album opener, “Do Things My Own Way.” This is another track where veteran Sparks listeners might be looking initially for more of a twist than actually exists, because it is actually is what appears to be: an ode to independence and, implicitly, to Sparks’ own.

“We try to avoid the obvious,” says Ron, “but I think in the case of ‘Do Things My Own Way,’ it’s probably the obvious, that it really is being done sincerely. I think you can trust this narrator, in that it really is an anthem for doing things your own way.” Russell, for his part, goes so far to describe it as “our manifesto, being said again but in a different sort of way. I guess from day one, it’s sort of been this rallying cry that we’ve kept to ourselves and have not as blatantly expressed it until this song. Anybody can use that as their own sort of rallying cry, but it’s reflecting on on Sparks as well. Our whole career, what we have really been maybe the most happy about with what we’ve done is just the fact that it’s always been on our own terms — everything. And for better or worse, we’ve not had to succumb to any outside forces telling us, what we should or shouldn’t be doing. Or if they have, we’ve ignored them and just kind of forged our own path. And so that song is, in a certain way, speaking about that.”

The simplest and maybe best, or pointedly funniest, lyrics in “Do Things My Own Way”: “My advice? / No advice.” “Well, those are actually my favorite lines on the album,” notes Russell. “We liked it so much so that when we were mixing it, I couldn’t resist hitting the mute button for the music behind those two lines so that they really stood out without the music continuing underneath them; I thought those two lines were too good to not emphasize even more.”

Among the tracks on the album that haven’t been heard yet, the song on the album that may be most controversial, at least among Angelenos, is “I-405” — which is actually an enthusiastically pro-San Diego Freeway song, even though the congested roadway is the bane of the existence of millions who travel through the west side of L.A.

“This is kind of a love song to the city,” says Ron. “Other cities, their main kind of arteries are often beautiful rivers — you know, the Seine or the Thames. Here, you know, the L.A. River is special in some ways, but it’s not like it is as obviously beautiful as those in other countries. But when you view the I-405, and especially kind of at dusk and maybe from up at the Getty Center, it is like a river, and there is a real beauty to it. And so we felt that it was a good subject to be immortalized.”

The album title “Mad!,” as simple as it is, has a double meaning for the Maels. “Always one of the more difficult things is coming up with the album title, but it seemed like it was an appropriate title, both for the album but also just for the times,” says Ron — “both in the sense of mad that’s craziness and mad as insanity, but also mad as being irate. And I think that it fits the moment.”

Sparks is at work, as reported or rumored, on a filmic followup to their “Annette” movie musical, this time with legendary filmmaker John Woo at the helm.

Says Russell, “At the beginning of last year, we fortunately met John Woo and had him hear this new project that we were working on called ‘Excruciary.’ He came over, sat through the two-hour presentation of the whole story and all of the music and said, ‘I really just love this and want to do this.’ We were just so excited, because, first of all, John Woo doing a musical seems really incongruous, but then John Woo doing a Sparks musical seems even one step beyond that. But after working with him for a year now, we really get along well with him and really like him a lot, just as a person, along with obviously appreciating what he’s done for the history of cinema. We were working with him for all of last year, refining some elements of the screenplay, and we’re all pretty happy with where it’s at now, so we’re just hoping that we’re gonna have the green light soon to kind of actually put it into production.”

“We’ve spent the last year kind of on and off working with John to sculpt a few things,” adds Ron. “He had a few ideas that he wanted to incorporate, and with a movie musical, especially one where it’s continuous singing, anytime there’s a new idea, it’s more complicated than just adding it to a screenplay. You have to actually re-record something and figure out a new arrangement for it. But his ideas were all really incredible and very, very visual. So we’re going through the period now trying to complete the financing of it — that’s always kind of the most difficult part, at least for the projects we’ve worked on, which is limited in number, I acknowledge. But we have the backing of just an amazing director and then also Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley, two incredible producers. And so it is at that stage where everything is kind of out of our hands as far as getting the financing for the film, but we couldn’t be more excited about any project. And kind of having the validation of people of that caliber is an incredible thing. John Woo just has such an amazing sense of cinema, and it is gonna be an amazing film.”

Sparks’ newly announced North American tour dates for 2025:

Fri. Sept. 5 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
Mon. Sept. 8 – Philadelphia, PA @ Keswick Theatre
Tue. Sept. 9 – Washington, DC @ Lincoln Theatre
Thu. Sept. 11 – Boston, MA @ Berklee Performance Center
Fri. Sept. 12 – Brooklyn, NY @ Kings Theatre
Sun. Sept. 14 – Columbus, OH @ The Athenaeum Theatre
Mon. Sept. 15 – Cleveland, OH @ TempleLive at Cleveland Masonic
Wed. Sept. 17 – Toronto, On @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Sat. Sept. 20 – St. Paul, MN @ Fitzgerald Theater
Tue. Sept. 23 – Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre
Wed. Sept. 24 – Seattle, WA @ Moore Theatre
Fri. Sept. 26 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Sat. Sept. 27 – San Francisco, CA @ Golden Gate Theatre
Mon. Sept. 29 – El Cajon, CA @ The Magnolia
Tue. Sept. 30 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre

Overseas tour dates (the July 12-19 shows are newly announced):

Sun. June 8 – Kyoto, JP @ ROHM Theatre
Tue. June 10 – Osaka, JP @ Zepp Namba
Thu. June 12 – Fri. June 13 – Tokyo, JP @ EX Theater
Wed. June 18 – Thu. June 19 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo
Sat. June 21 – Sun. June 22 – Manchester, UK @ O2 Apollo
Tue. June 24 – Glasgow, UK @ Royal Concert Hall
Thu. June 26 – Haarlem, NL @ PHIL Haarlem
Sat. June 28 – Brussels, BE @ Cirque Royal
Mon. June 30 – Paris, FR @ La Salle Pleyel
Tue. July 1 – Cologne, DE @ Live Music Hall (venue upscale)
Thu. July 3 – Copenhagen, DK @ The Koncerthuset
Fri. July 4 – Stockholm, SE @ Grona Lund Tivoli
Sun. July 6 – Berlin, DE @ Uber Eats
Tue. July 8 – Milan, IT @ Teatro degli Arcimboldi
Sat. July 12 – Bilbao, ES @ Bilbao BBK
Tue. July 15 – Dublin, IE @ National Stadium
Wed. July 16 – Dublin, IE @ National Stadium
Fri. July 18 – Edinburgh, UK @ Edinburgh Playhouse
Sat. July 19 Wolverhampton, UK @ The Halls