"Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (Tears for Fears)

I was at the office recently for a quarterly planning meeting.  There were about 30 of us of varying ages, squeezed around a conference table, having lunch.  Somehow in the course of conversation, one of my colleagues started talking about 80s music, and this (very) young intern pipes up and says, "Wow, I wish, like, I was born, like, in the 80s.  It was, like, so much, like, fun and stuff!"
After I got done tossing her from the roof of the building*, I made my case that the 80s weren't so hot.  Honestly, they were pretty awful.  Everyone dressed like clowns escaped from a mental institution, and we had the hair to match.  Self-centeredness was status quo.  And the Russians were out to obliterate us, and vice versa.  Honestly, it was a decade of bad taste, greed, and fear that planted the seeds of our current decade of bad taste, greed, and fear.  (If you were alive in the 80s, I challenge you to name one fond memory that isn't somehow related to one of the following: a consumer product, a T.V. show, a song/album, or a film.  It's nearly impossible to do.)
I bring this up because I always found "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" from Songs from the Big Chair (1985) to be an astute commentary on the 80s.  (Quite a feat, I think, considering the decade was only half over when Tears for Fears wrote/released it!)
On the surface, it's an upbeat pop song with a danceable beat, memorable guitar solo, and singable chorus.  If you're not really paying much attention, you might think the refrain Everybody wants to rule the world is just some douchebag mantra that reiterates the 80s "I'm gonna get mine" mentality.  But if you listen a little more closely, you get that Curt Smith is delivering a warning about greed and powermongering.  In truth, the song is a lament.  It's about being full of hopes and dreams as young person in the modern world, but then coming to the stark realization that it all could be obliterated at the whim of one person tomorrow.
That was the reality of the 80s.  We were just trying to remain upbeat through the thick of it.

(*No 20-year-olds were harmed in the composition of this blog entry.)