Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Here’s a neat trick: write a song about the corrupting nature of power, the futility of ambition, and the looming threat of global annihilation. Make it sound like a summer afternoon.
Roland Orzabal hated this song. Thought it was too pop, too commercial, too easy. He was right about all of that. He was wrong about it mattering.
- Reagan. Thatcher. The Cold War thawing and refreezing. MTV making everyone famous and no one real. The world felt like it was ending in slow motion, and everyone just kept dancing.
“Welcome to your life. There’s no turning back.”
The opening line is a threat disguised as a greeting. The whole song does that—buries the knife in a bouquet of flowers. That guitar riff, those synths, Curt Smith’s voice smooth as cream. You could play this at a wedding. You could play this at a funeral. You could play this while everything burns.
“It’s my own design, it’s my own remorse.”
Orzabal was writing about politicians, about systems, about the machinery of control. But the song works because it’s also about you. About anyone who ever wanted something and got it and realized wanting was better than having. About the gap between ambition and satisfaction that never closes.
They almost left it off the album. Too poppy. Didn’t fit. The label insisted.
Sometimes the label is right.
Forty years later, the world still feels like it’s ending in slow motion. The song still sounds like a summer afternoon. And everybody still wants to rule the world.
Nothing’s changed.
That’s the joke.
