Songoftheday 5/16/14 - Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it You play the guitar on the MTV...

Dire Straits - "Money For Nothing"
from the album Brothers In Arms (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's Song of the Day is by the British progressive blues/rock band Dire Straits, who came together in the late 70s under guitarist and singer Mark Knopfler and his brother David, along with drummer Pick Withers and bassist John Illsley. Their self-titled debut album, produced by Steve Winwood's brother Mervyn ("Muff"), came out in 1978, but their first big hit "Sultans Of Swing" took awhile to catch on, helped by their opening stint for the Talking Heads, and in time reached the top ten on the pop charts of both America and the UK. Also David left the band at the beginning of the new decade, their success on the album rock radio circuit continued through the early 80s, and they scored their highest rank on the British charts in 1982 with "Private Investigations". The two hits drew heavy from jazz-style arrangements, with a free-flow style suited more for the rock radio format, as well as increasingly thoughtful lyrics about working strife and romantic troubles.

By 1985, Withers had also left, leaving just Mark and Illsley as the sole original member, and adding keyboardists Guy Fletcher and Alan Clark as well as drummer Terry Williams and second guitarist Jack Sonni. Their fifth studio album, Brothers In Arms, would change their sound just like Heart's self-titled set would, removing the experimental aspects of their work and adding more synthesized elements. The first single from the set, "Money For Nothing", was a comical look at how the music industry was looked upon by the "common people", voiced by a fictional old appliance store worker. With a vocal tag from Sting of the Police, singing the "I want my MTV" line to his bands "Don't Stand So Close To Me" and earning a writing credit on the song, the single featured churning metal-esque guitars and a keyboard backdrop that fit with the new wave of the day. The video, with what now seems like rudimentary animation but at the time was truly amazing to young kids tuning to MTV, brought the gruff, homophobic character to "life" on the channel. There was protest against the use of the "faggot" word in the song, but this is sung by Knopfler as an beligerent dolt that requires the language to prove how behind the times he is, and it ended up rewarding them with a Best Video Award from MTV...

"Money For Nothing" became the bands first and only #1 hit on the pop chart in America in September of 1985, as it did the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard the previous month. Internationally, the single topped the chart in Canada, and went top-ten in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Austria, and their native Britain, where it climbed to #4. It would end of nabbing the title of the best-known song of theirs from "Sultans...", switching them from a 70s prog-fusion band to a lean hitmaking arena-rock machine.

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Here's the band performing "Money For Nothing" at Live Aid in 1985...

..and again without Sting on tour at the same venue in that same month...

...and with Sting, Elton John, Phil Collins, and Eric Clapton at the Prince's Trust...

Here they are at Knebworth in 1990, again with Clapton...

In 1989, parody king "Weird" Al Yankovic did an early "mashup" of this song with the theme from the Beverly Hillbillies for his UHF movie...

Iranian-American progreesive house duo Deep Dish also mixed "Money For Nothing", this time with "He's A Dream" off the Flashdance soundtrack for "Flashing For Money" in 2005...

Finally, here's Mark Knopfler with Clapton, Collins, and Sting at the Music For Montserrat concert in 1997...

Up tomorrow: the temporary living quarters are embarassed.