FEATURE:
Groovelines
Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants to Rule the World
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THIS is a song that I have been meaning…
to put into this feature for a long time. Tears for Fears’ 1985 single, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, is one of my favourite songs ever! It was my first memory of life. I might have heard in 1985 when I was two – it was very close to that time anyway. There are some articles that I want to bring in, so one can get a history of the track and why it was written. Released in March 1985 – it was taken from the English band’s Songs from the Big Chair (1985) album – and written by Roland Orzabal, Ian Stanley, and Chris Hughes, it is a song that reached the top spot in the U.S. and number two here (I wonder why it was slightly more popular there?!). Written at a time when there was the threat of nuclear annihilation during The Cold War and many felt very tense, the song had real gravitas and relevance. This Wikipedi article gives us a little background to Everybody Wants to Rule the World:
“Everybody Wants to Rule the World" was written by Roland Orzabal, Ian Stanley and Chris Hughes, and produced by Hughes. The song was a "last-minute" addition during recording sessions of Songs from the Big Chair (1985). The decision to include the song in the album came after Orzabal played two chords on his acoustic guitar for Hughes. It was recorded in two weeks and added as the final track on the album. According to Orzabal, the final line in the song's chorus, originally written as "Everybody wants to go to war", contributed to his indifference towards the track.
In an interview with Mix magazine, Hughes said that "as a piece of recording history, [the song is] bland as hell." Orzabal's unimpressed reaction to the track during their songwriting sessions prompted Hughes to convince him to record it, in a calculated effort to garner American chart success. After completing their sessions at 6PM, they would spend an hour reviewing each recording many times; this helped Orzabal to create the song's guitar figure and change its title. Orzabal acknowledged that the shuffle beat used in the song was "alien" to their way of writing music, stating it was "jolly rather than square and rigid in the manner of 'Shout', but it continued the process of becoming more extrovert." Curt Smith, the song's lead singer, said the themes were "quite serious – it's about everybody wanting power, about warfare and the misery it causes”.
It is interesting to think about the song now and whether it has the same meaning as it did in the 1980s. There were some who were dismissive when Everybody Wants to Rule the World was released; feeling that it did not convey punch and any real political message – a song that was not as potent as it should have been. To me, it is a really strong anthem where the slightly upbeat composition and vocals are juxtaposed with the starker messages. Auralcrave wrote about Tears for Fears’ smash last year:
“Reliable voice of the aesthetics of their time, Tears For Fears propose themselves as ideal companions on a journey between light and shadow. Yet, among their songs there are some that seem to embody the spirit of every era, and Everybody Wants To Rule The World is one of these always valid posters. If every generation has its nightmares, this song, which under the reassuring sound of the New Wave hides an intertwining of cynicism, desire for supremacy and mirages of a distant freedom, is an anti-hymn to the visions that torment the imagination of us all . Regardless of the time we live in.
Track from the album Song from the Big Chair (one of the group’s greatest hits) dating back to 1985, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, included in the project at the last moment, is a reference to the Cold War still in progress. Roland Orzabal initially plans to name it Everybody Wants To Go To War, realizing afterwards that it didn’t sound right.
The words of the young singer are dictated by the collective suspicion of a possible nuclear war, as well as by the fear of the unknown that lies in the total uncertainty of the future to come. Assumptions that allow the lyrics to emerge from the war situation and become more generally valid, an incredibly catchy rant against the thirst for power of those “personal dictators” – such as an authoritarian parent or an overbearing superior at work – who would always like to order us what to do, guiding every action of our existence.
The opening lines, made of an almost frightening inevitability, lead us to a sort of Orwellian world, a system based on constant and oppressive surveillance:
Welcome to your life
There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you
Acting on your best behaviour
Turn your back on mother nature
Everybody wants to rule the world
Once you become aware of being alive, you also acquire the awareness of being continually observed and judged, rewarded or punished by a power claimed and “justified” by the mere fact of being up there. A control, that of those who impose themselves, which cannot be escaped and which can only make us think of the grip in which the digital revolutions of the new millennium have tightened reality, now reduced and regulated by the anxious principle of acceptance and beauty. There is no escape from tyrants as there is no escape from the big eye of public opinion, hungry for errors to be condemned and ridiculed”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Putland/Getty Images
I will come to an article that talks about cover versions of the song. Whilst I am not a fan of any of the cover versions – it is a song that is perfect as it is and sounds a lot weaker when others tackle it -, it does show that it has resonated through the years. As this article explains, there was a British Invasion in the U.S. in 1985 – over twenty years after The Beatles were at the centre of one in the 1960s:
“The duo of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith were a huge part of that second British invasion. When TFF entered the Hot 100 in March that year with “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” all of their initial UK success to that point had yielded just one US singles chart appearance, and that at a No.73 peak, with “Change” in 1983. The album The Hurting reached the exact same position.
On June 8, 1985, the Tears For Fears single took over from Wham!’s “Everything She Wants” to begin a two-week reign on the Hot 100. Wham!’s single had itself replaced Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” at the top, as British acts held sway for a five-week stretch. Just five weeks later, Songs From The Big Chair was topping the album chart, for the first of five non-consecutive weeks”.
I really love the sounds of the mid-’80s and what was being produced in the U.K. Such amazing songs that have stood the test of time! To me, Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World is among the very best.
PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Noble/Redferns
Stereogum looked back at the song when they put it under the spotlight last year. Although they were not entirely convinced by the authenticity, status and authority in the song, there were some interesting observations:
“The UK duo Tears For Fears spoke that language, too. By 1985, the Second British Invasion — the cascade of twitchy synthpop kids who blew up on MTV — had started to fade. The sound of an arch art-school voice declaiming cryptic nothings over beeping keyboards no longer seemed like the future. When they debuted, Tears For Fears got lost in that moment; they made big hits at home but struggled to connect in America. On their second album, though, Tears For Fears tapped right into the sonic maximalism of their era, and they made a blockbuster. With “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” the duo set out explicitly to conquer America. For a little while, that’s exactly what they did.
The video is a smart and well-realized vision, too. Director Nigel Dick, who had already directed the “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” video and whose work will appear in this column a great many times, filmed Smith driving a beautiful old convertible around Southern California and Nevada. There’s no central narrative; it’s just an Englishman adrift in an American landscape. We get some gorgeous shots of Smith standing in the golden-hour desert light while dirtbikes vroom all around him, and we also get some racially weird moments where two Black men in tuxedos do some kind of vaudeville dance routine at a gas station. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with that, but it’s a hazy, pretty, inviting video, and I can see why it would’ve pulled in the kids who caught it in MTV.
Still, it’s a little surprising to learn just how big Tears For Fears were that summer. “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” was only the second Tears For Fears single to hit the American charts, and it made Tears For Fears into something huge. Songs From The Big Chair sold five million copies in America, and the album spent five weeks atop the Billboard album charts. Tears For Fears will soon be back in this column”.
I want to finish with the Financial Times’ study of the song. They cast a light on Lorde’s cover. I am not keen on it. That said, her lowering the vocal does draw something new from the lyrics:
“Tears for Fears’ 1985 hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was a breakthrough for the English band, a worldwide success that topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and spent six weeks in the UK’s top five. Taken from their 1985 album Songs from the Big Chair, it epitomised the maturation of founding members Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith from relative low-liers in the mod revival band Graduate, to a globe-conquering synth-pop outfit. Thanks to a bigger, reverb-heavy sound which resonated worldwide, Songs from the Big Chair sold five million copies in the US alone.
They also became part of the “second British invasion” of the US — a new wave of acts who, thanks largely to MTV coverage, found favour among American audiences with their synth-based sounds and glossy videos. The invasion was spearheaded in 1981 by The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”, with bands such as Duran Duran following in their wake and Tears for Fears joining the party in the mid-1980s.
“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” emerged when singer and songwriter Roland Orzabal was in the studio sessions towards the end of recording Songs from the Big Chair and came up with a two-chord riff; the rest of the song, he later said, was “effortless”, though it did undergo some changes. Its lyrics were about the thirst for power and its consequences, with intimations of what was seen by many at the time as the imminent threat of global nuclear war. In an early iteration, the chorus ended with: “Everybody wants to go to war”, but the band were uncomfortable with this, preferring the less didactic version that made the final cut.
Given its commercial impact and its melodic strengths, it’s no surprise that the song has had an afterlife stretching to the present day. It was treated with relative conservatism by Gloria Gaynor (1986) and Patti Smith (2007), who both retained the original’s pacing and synth progression. In 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, rapper Nas sampled the synth riff and the chorus on his single “Rule”, a plea for racial tolerance and peace in a troubled world.
With its blend of thematic gravity and musical vibrancy, it became a natural fit for film and TV soundtracks; it was used most recently in Steven Spielberg’s 2018 sci-fi adventure Ready Player One, as well as being a regular fixture in scenes of histrionic high drama in the BBC soap EastEnders.
In the meantime, another, radical re-reading of the song was gaining traction. Lorde, the then-17-year-old New Zealand singer, covered it for the soundtrack to the 2013 film The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Hers was a treatment that looked at the song anew, sedating the original’s insistent drumline and dispensing with its synth progression.
Lorde’s decision to lower the tempo of the track so drastically drew attention to the lyrics, as they oscillate between rhetorical pleas and declarative prophecies, acting both as social commentary and holistic musing: “Help me make the most/ Of freedom and of pleasure/ Nothing ever lasts forever/ Everybody wants to rule the world.” Lorde’s version also made its way on to trailers for blockbuster video games such as Assassin’s Creed Unity.
Two recent versions have returned to Tears for Fears’ original blueprint. Veteran producer Trevor Horn passes the microphone to Robbie Williams for an orchestral arrangement on his … Reimagines the Eighties album, while American rock outfit Weezer include a forgettable attempt on their collection of 1980s covers, The Teal Album. Introducing Tears for Fears’ original to young blood is left to DJs such as CC: DISCO! and Berlin-based Brits Objekt and Call Super, who situate the track among New Order and Depeche Mode as part of dance music’s wider new wave nostalgia.
Tears for Fears themselves, however, have given the ultimate accolade to Lorde’s radical re-reading: the band are still touring, and on stage, before they perform “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, Lorde’s version is played over the PA”.
I am going to leave it there. I still get tingles when I hear Everybody Wants to Rule the World! It is a song that stuck with me in 1985, and it is firmly lodged in my brain! Now, I can listen to it and get something new from it! Whether you prefer the original or like the cover versions more, Tears for Fears’ masterful 1985 track is an absolute classic. If you have not heard the song in a while, then do…
CHECK it out now.