Tears For Fears – Everybody Wants To Rule The World

Everybody Wants To Rule The World by Tears for Fears
Album: Songs From The Big Chair (1985)
Charted: US No.1, UK No.2

This song is about the quest for power, and how it can have unfortunate consequences. In an interview with Mix magazine, the band’s producer Chris Hughes explained that they spent months working on “Shout,” and near the end of the sessions, Roland Orzabal came into the studio and played two simple chords on his acoustic guitar, which became the basis for the song. Said Hughes: “‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ was so simple and went down so quickly, it was effortless, really. In fact, as a piece of recording history, it’s bland as hell.”
This was the first US #1 hit for Tears for Fears. “Shout” went to #1 two months later.

“Everybody Wants To Rule The World” is a line from the 1980 Clash song “Charlie Don’t Surf.” Did Tears for Fears lift it? Joe Strummer of The Clash thought so. He recounted a story to Musician magazine about confronting Roland Orzabal in a restaurant, informing Orzabal that “you owe me a fiver.” Strummer said that Roland reached in his pocket and produced a five pound note, ostensibly as compensation for poaching the line for his hit title.

Although musically this is quite a jangly and catchy song, its lyrical theme is actually pretty dark. “The concept is quite serious – it’s about everybody wanting power, about warfare and the misery it causes,” Curt Smith of Tears For Fears explained on the band’s website.

The video for “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was directed by Nigel Dick. It was filmed in Los Angeles, Desert Hot Springs, Palm Springs, and Cabazon, California. Curt Smith admitted to Pitchfork that the video shoot was a “disaster”; Dick was “in tears” on the second night of shooting.[66] Smith also mentioned that there was an accident while filming the “dirt bikes and four-wheel [sic] off-road vehicles” scene, with one child flying out of a vehicle and smashing his head, leaving him unconscious.

The video begins with Smith driving a vintage Austin-Healey 3000 sports car while a toddler points toy guns in Smith’s direction.[66] The car is then seen driving through a desert, on Interstate 10, this scene is intercut with the band performing the song in a studio. In the chorus, a plane is seen. Smith parks the car at the Wheel Inn diner and makes a call from a telephone booth. The camera pans to show a statue of a prospector and his donkey in the foreground. Smith leaves the diner in the car while singing the song’s lyrics. The following scene shows two men in suits performing synchronised dance movements in front of two gas pumps. Shots of young people riding three-wheeled ATVs and dirt bikes through desert sand dunes are also shown. Smith is then shown singing in the desert wearing black sunglasses as many of the dirt bike and ATV riders approach from behind him and pass to either side.