“Walk of Life” by Dire Straits

"Walk of Life" is the third cut on Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits' fifth album, from 1985, and it's the band at its most carefree: a bouncing country-rock shuffle that Mark Knopfler wrote, sang and co-produced with Neil Dorfsman. Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher ride a chirpy keyboard hook, Omar Hakim and John Illsley keep a jaunty two-step going underneath, and Knopfler's clean, twanging guitar struts right down the middle of it.

America got it as a single in October 1985 and Britain the following January. It gave the band its third and final top-10 hit in the States, stopping at number 7, and at home it climbed to number 2, sharing the title of their biggest UK hit with "Private Investigations". It later resurfaced on Money for Nothing and on the live set On the Night.

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