"Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is a song by the English New Wave band Tears for Fears.
It was the band's ninth single release in the United Kingdom (the third from their second LP: Songs from the Big Chair) and seventh UK Top 40 chart hit, peaking at number two in April 1985. In the U.S., it was the lead single from the album and gave the band their first Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit on 8 June 1985, remaining there for two weeks. It also reached number-one on both the Hot Dance Music/Club Play and Hot Dance Singles Sales charts in the U.S. The song has since become the pinnacle of Tears for Fears' chart success, its endurance allowing it to accumulate over two million radio broadcasts by 1994, according to BMI.
In 1986, the song won "Best Single" at the Brit Awards. Band member and co-writer Roland Orzabal argued that the song deserved to win the Ivor Novello International Hit of the Year award, claiming that the winner - "19" by Paul Hardcastle - was not an actual song, but only a "dialogue collage."
Read more about Everybody Wants To Rule The World: Background, Meanings, Song Versions, B-side, Music Video, Track Listings, Cover Versions, Live Cover Performances, Sampling, In Other Media, Charts
Famous quotes containing the words the world, rule and/or world:
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Democracy don’t rule the world,
You’d better get that in your head;
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that’s better left unsaid.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)
“The modern picture of The Artist began to form: The poor, but free spirit, plebeian but aspiring only to be classless, to cut himself forever free from the bonds of the greedy bourgeoisie, to be whatever the fat burghers feared most, to cross the line wherever they drew it, to look at the world in a way they couldn’t see, to be high, live low, stay young forever—in short, to be the bohemian.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)