Watch Lettuce’s Video for ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ From Grammy-Nominated ‘Elevate’ Album

On the heels of their first ever Grammy nomination, Lettuce has released the first video for their sixth studio album Elevate, a funk and soul cover of Tears For Fears’ 1985 hit “Everybody Wants To Rule the World.”

Arranged by drummer Adam Deitch and keyboardist Nigel Hall — who also sings vocals on the track — the song has long been a staple of the band’s live show and was finally recorded for the 2019 album.

“I like a lot of those iconic 80 songs and when you hear Tears for Fears, they have aesthetic and melodies that stick in your head,” Deitch tells Billboard. “The song has a really strong chorus, really strong verses and this really dreamy guitar work. We spent a lot of time working trying to figure out how to keep that vibe and update it with a little hip hop, gogo funk-swing twist on it.”

The single is one of two on Elevate that include a vocalist — southern rock/ blues phenom Marcus King sings on the track “Love is Too Strong” — earning the band a Grammy for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. Elevate debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Album Chart and No. 1 on the iTunes R&B Albums Chart and has been streamed over 2 million times since its release. The album also charted in the Top 15 on Billboard’s Jazz Albums, R&B Album Sales, and Heatseekers charts. Elevate was released on Lettuce Records and recorded at Colorado Sound Studio outside of Denver with legendary engineer Russ Elevado.

Lettuce is made up of Hall, trumpet player Eric Bloom and founding members Deitch, guitarist Adam “Shmeeans” Smirnoff, saxophone player Ryan Zoidis and bassist Eric “Jesus” Coomes. The band formed in 1992 at Berklee College in Boston and have toured most of 2019 supporting the album with a New Year’s Eve show planned for The Independent in San Francisco.

The video for Lettuce’s cover of “Everybody Wants To Rule the World” was created by the band’s director Chad Marshall using a combination of found-and-sourced footage as well as original work and will likely be incorporated into the band’s future live shows.

“Many of the shots were filmed from above the earth and it’s kind of a way to remove ourselves from our earthly troubles and things that we go through and just remember to look from above and so the video tells its own story in that way,” Deitch says. “We wanted to try something different. I grew up watching MTV and VH1 and seeing videos told a story and had a message and vibe. So we just wanted to approach it from that perspective and create something highlighting the everyday struggle of people trying to stay above water and supercede those challenges to live life.”

Watch “Everybody Wants To Rule the World” below and learn more about Lettuce at lettucefunk.com.