[6] Record World described the song as being a "simple, catchy cut" with "a flexible bass [that] sets the consistent, throbbing pulse" and "mechanistic keyboard lines.

The instrumental middle section features two friends of the band from the Rum Runner nightclub nicknamed Gay John and Lavinya[8] dancing in their full New Romantic regalia.

In an apocalyptic science-fiction style, various world facts slide cross the bottom of the screen as the video plays, including: "the area of the surface of the earth is 196,937,600 miles"; "247,860 people are born every day"; "the oldest known song is the Shadoof Chant"; and then it ends with a warning of "Doomsday."

At the end of the video, lead vocalist Simon Le Bon leaps from the stage, caught in a freeze-frame shot above an apparently bottomless abyss.

Back in 1981, the technology to do extended remixes was still quite rudimentary, so the band chose instead to create a new arrangement of the song, loosely based on the version they were playing live at the time.

For the 1999 remix album Strange Behaviour, EMI inadvertently unearthed unreleased alternative mixes of both "Planet Earth" and "Hold Back the Rain".