"Change the World" is a song recorded by Eric Clapton with backing by Babyface for the soundtrack of the 1996 film Phenomenon. The song won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year (for the songwriters Tommy Sims, Gordon Kennedy and Wayne Kirkpatrick), as well as Best Male Pop Vocal performance. The song was chosen by the RIAA as one of the Songs of the Century, ranked at #270.

The single peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the summer of 1996. It also spent 13 weeks at #1 on the adult contemporary chart and remained on that chart for over a year and a half (80 weeks), a feat which was extraordinarily rare at the time.^[1] Since then, however, certain songs have remained on the AC chart for extended periods of time, prompting the eventual creation af an Adult Contemporary recurrent chart for songs that have stayed on the chart for many weeks and fallen below a certain threshhold.

Although Change the World is better known as an unplugged acoustic track, a rare electric performance of the song was featured on Babyface's 1997 live album Babyface MTV Unplugged NYC, with Slowhand on co-lead vocals, playing his namesake signature Fender Stratocaster guitar.

In the song, the performer expresses his desire to communicate his love to an unnamed woman. This love, he fears, will go unrequited without a drastic change in his life.

Track listing

European CD Single

1. "Change the World" (LP Version) (3:57)
2. "Danny Boy" (Non-LP Track) (4:14)
3. "Change the World" (Instrumental) (3:57)

References

1. ↑ Hyatt, Wesley (1999). The Billboard Book of #1 Adult Contemporary Hits (Billboard Publications)