Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Everybody Wants to Rule the World is the ninth single of Tears for fears released in the United Kingdom. It is the third song in their LP Songs from the Big Chair. It was placed at #7 at the UK Top 40 chart hit and it peaked at #2 in April 1985. It became the lead single from their album in the U.S. and this gave Tears for Fears their first number-one hit in the Billboard Hot 100 on June 8, 1985. It actually stayed there for 2 consecutive weeks. The song also got the top place on both the Hot Dance Singles Sales and Hot Dance Music/Club Play charts in America. It then became the summit of the chart success of Tears for Fears. In 1994, it actually accumulated more than two million radio broadcast.

During the Brit Awards in 1986, the song won the best single. As Orzabal stated that the song deserves to win the Ivor Novello International Hit of the Year Award, he practically stated that the song “19” by Paul Hardcastle was just actually a dialogue collage.

“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was to some extent a late addition during the Songs from the Big Chair recording. Roland Orzabal stated that he at first regarded the song as a lightweight and that it would not work out with the rest of the album. Producer Chris Hughes convinced Orzabal to try recording it, in a premeditated attempt to cross over into chart success in America. Orzabal later revealed in a radio interview that the songs beat was “borrowed” from another UK Top 40 chart hit by Simple Minds titled “Waterfront”.

It was written and recorded in two weeks and was the final track to be added to the Songs from the Big Chair album. The shuffle beat was alien to our normal way of doing things. It was jolly rather than square and rigid in the manner of ‘Shout’, but it continued the process of becoming more extrovert.

—Roland Orzabal

The song featured on lead vocals, bassist Curt Smith. Just like in three other hit singles from Tears for Fears’ debut LP The Hurting

The concept is quite serious – it’s about everybody wanting power, about warfare and the misery it causes.

—Curt Smith

“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” being popular and all has seen quite a few remixes. Producer Chris Hughes did the Extended, instrumental, and an “urban mix” version, which was included on the single’s various 12″ releases. Another said remix was done by electronica act The Chosen Few, which was also on the 2004 reissue of the greatest hits compilation Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92). There were no issued alternate 7” versions or official radio edits. A version labeled as the 7″ version is also in the 2006 remaster of “Songs from the Big Chair”, it has a shorter intro but there’s nothing else different from the album version.

The song was afterward to some extent re-recorded with a new lyric and released as “Everybody Wants to Run the World” for the 1986 Sport Aid fund-raising campaign, during the process it reached the UK Top 5.