"Everybody Wants to Rule the World" was voted the 25th best single in "The Village Voice"s Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1985 with 17 points, sharing the spot with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Don't Come Around Here No More" (1985) and Sade's "Smooth Operator" (1984). "Pitchfork" placed the song at number 82 on their list for the best songs of the 80s expressing that "underneath the synth-pop sheen, its vague message" and its lesson in how power-driven society could be, the song was able to reach "Reagan and Margaret-era youth fed up with political greed." Kevin Korber from "Spectrum Culture" ranked the song at 24 on his 80s decade list, calling the song a "testament to how much of a free-for-all the pop landscape was in the 1980s." Korber dismissed the song's vague lyrics but praised its complex melodic structure, saying it was "both the perfect representation of its time and a timeless composition." "Treble" included the song at number 49 on their decade list.