10 Best-Selling Rock Singles Of All Time
3. Scorpions, 'Wind Of Change' (1991)
Consecutive weeks at number one on the Official German Charts: 11
YouTube views to date: 931 million
Sometimes hard rock has the mainstream appeal to sway otherwise ignorant listeners closer to the dark side – and, often, it helps if it meets them half-way. At least, that is the case with West German leather rock group Scorpions, whose power ballad 'Wind Of Change' helped them smash the charts back in 1991 and 1992, with estimated sales of 15 million singles to date.
Inspired by the Moscow Music Peace Festival, the end of the Cold War and the tearing down of the Berlin wall, 'Wind Of Change' is an English-language ode to the potential of international cooperation and the band's love for Russia, which gave it a timely political bent and endless multinational appeal. The song preceded the end of the Soviet Empire by just a short while, but the band were so enthusiastic about Mikhail Gorbachev's socialist agenda that they presented him a gold record and somewhere in the region of £50,000 following the song's success.
Naturally though, the track also fomented opposition. Criticism from Soviet traditionalists and a few conspiracy theories have followed it, like the supposed input from the CIA in the songwriting process. But nothing has yet been able to topple this monolith.