“Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits

"Money for Nothing" comes second on Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits' fifth studio album, and went out as its second single in 1985. It opens with Sting's high, ghostly falsetto and a rolling drum break, and then Mark Knopfler's riff hits like a dropped anvil.

Knopfler's words put you inside the heads of two working-class guys watching music videos and sounding off about what they see; he shares the music credit with Sting, who also sings backing vocals and a chanted chorus that borrows the melody of the verses of the Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me". Knopfler produced it with Neil Dorfsman, who engineered, and the band behind him is packed: John Illsley on bass, Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher on keyboards, Omar Hakim on drums, and Terry Williams adding more.

It spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number four at home in the UK, and that July Dire Straits and Sting played it at Live Aid. Steve Barron's video, one of the first to use computer-animated people, drew 11 nominations at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards and was named Video of the Year, with Best Group Video thrown in, and it was the first clip MTV Europe aired when the channel launched in 1987. At the 28th Grammys it took home the award for the year's top rock performance by a duo or group.

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