1985 No. 1 Pop-Rock Hit Is Suddenly Climbing the Charts Exactly 41 Years Later
The Tears for Fears song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is back on the charts-41 years after it first hit No. 1.
The pop-rock classic landed at No. 23 on Billboard's Rock Streaming Songs chart for the week ending June 6, 2026. The song's re-entry onto Billboard's chart comes the same week that the song hit No. 1 in 1985. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" originally hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 8, 1985.
Written by Roland Orzabal, Ian Stanley and Chris Hughes, the song was a last-minute addition to the English pop-rock band's album Songs From the Big Chair.
In an interview with Pitchfork, Hughes revealed that "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" was written and recorded in a week after Orzabal played two simple chords on his acoustic guitar while in the studio.
"'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," Hughes once told Mix magazine, per Songfacts.
While the writing and recording were easy, the song's theme of power and greed during the Cold War was serious business. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" became Tears for Fears' career-defining anthem as well as an anthem for the state of the world.
Band member Curt Smith told Yahoo! Entertainment that the song still resonated politically decades later.
"I think a lot of these songs, now that I've listened back to them, are kind of just as poignant as they were then, but just towards different people, different areas of the world," he said in 2017. "Back when we were doing Songs From the Big Chair and ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World,' we were really discussing the Cold War. But it was the U.S. and Russia then, and now the concern is more the U.S. and Korea. I find that fascinating."
Related: 1981 Classic Written by Rock Legend Was Overshadowed by His Duet With Another Music Icon
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This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 3:54 AM.