Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits

Brothers in Arms, the fifth Dire Straits album, came out in May 1985 on Vertigo, with Warner Bros. handling it in the US, and it made history in a format barely out of the box: it was the first album ever to sell a million copies on CD. Mark Knopfler produced it with Neil Dorfsman, who had engineered Love over Gold and Knopfler's Local Hero soundtrack, and the sound is as polished and spacious as anything the decade produced.

Knopfler's guitar and weary vocals lead a big band: John Illsley on bass, Hal Lindes on guitar, Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher on keyboards, Terry Williams on drums and Chris White on saxophone. "Money for Nothing" is a heavy, sardonic crunch, "Walk of Life" is a bouncing, jubilant shuffle, "So Far Away" and "Your Latest Trick" glide along late-night and smoky, and the title track sinks into a mournful, misty hush.

It spent 14 weeks at number one in the UK, nine at the top of the Billboard 200 and 34 in Australia, became the first album certified ten times platinum in Britain, and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. It won the Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical in 1986 and Best British Album at the 1987 Brit Awards, and the band toured it through 1985 and 1986.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.