What is the best-selling classic rock song by an artist outside the UK and US?
One of the major issues which continues to plague our consumption of music is our increasingly narrow view of its greatness. Mainstream is typified by the success of acts from the UK or North America only, and everything else, from Europe to Asia and all the other continents, is deemed as having very little international appeal or as some niche discovery.
We’re all guilty of it, but it also means that we miss out on whole other lands of classic rock.
When you consider the top ten best-selling rock singles of all time, for example, nine of those originate from either Britain or America, unsurprisingly. Within this, two of those are charity singles appealing for famine relief in African countries from Western shores – Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ and ‘We Are the World’ by USA for Africa’, which raises its own questionable ethics in itself. But nowhere else gets any kind of representation.
Except for one song flying the flag for the entire rest of the world, that is. That burden rests on ‘Wind of Change’ by the German rock band Scorpions, having sold over 14 million copies since its release in 1991, and thus becoming one of the best-selling singles of all time. A major reason for the song doing so much heavy lifting, of course, is not just the masses’ soft spot for a power ballad, but because the message the song sends is perhaps more pertinent than any other in the rock canon.
Hitting the number one spot in six European countries, including Germany, and reaching number two in the UK as well as number four in the US charts, ‘Wind of Change’ is a rare, and perhaps even singular, example of a rock song from outside of the transatlantic echelons that made a real and lasting indent on its musical exclusivity. Indeed, the song carved its way into history in more ways than one, arguably leaving a greater legacy than anything the two top countries could ever leave behind.
How did ‘Wind of Change’ impact the global rock canon?
Although Bob Geldof, Bono and the gang may think they’re the keyholders to world peace through music, Scorpions can absolutely give them a run for their money in this respect, by penetrating the very heart of the Soviet Union. With the band’s lead singer, Klaus Meine, having written the lyrics inspired by the perestroika – or restructuring – of the Soviet Union, and then releasing the song just at the crux of its downfall, evidently, it struck the precise chord that would resonate across the world.
Of course, the song has come to be associated with its fair share of other seismic world events along the way. From the anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall to the war in Ukraine, the song has been used in any and every context to advocate for peace, even having to bat off allegations that it was composed by the CIA as a result. But with $70,000 of its royalties also given to Mikhail Gorbachev in order to rebuild children’s hospitals back in 1991, it really is the definition of a song that made a real difference.
While we can celebrate our own little microcosm of British and American rock to our heart’s content, it’s worth remembering that Scorpions’ ‘Wind of Change’, as an outlier to the best-selling pack, possibly made a bigger impact on the state of the world than any of the rest combined. Branching out from your typical musical origins might not just give you a new favourite band, but you never know – it might just also kickstart global peace.
