1985 · Behind the Songs
An appliance store, MTV, and Sting.
Mark Knopfler was killing time in an appliance store — by most accounts in New York — when he noticed two delivery men watching the wall of televisions. MTV was on, and the men were offering a running commentary on the videos: that’s the way you do it, they said, money for nothing. Knopfler borrowed a pen and wrote down what he heard, nearly word for word.
Back in Montserrat, where the band was recording Brothers in Arms, the song grew around a massive, processed guitar riff. Sting happened to be on the island, dropped by the studio, and Knopfler asked him to sing the “I want my MTV” refrain — using the melody of the Police hit “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” which earned Sting a co-writing credit.
Released as a single, “Money for Nothing” gave Dire Straits their first American number 1 (it reached number 4 in Britain), won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group, and its early computer-animation video won Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards. Decades later, the song’s unedited lyric drew complaints from Canadian broadcast regulators over a slur in the workmen’s dialogue — a reminder that a song built from overheard speech carries the rough edges of the real world with it.
For all the irony, the record itself is a marvel of construction: a joke overheard in a shop, turned into one of the defining singles of the MTV era.