MONEY FOR NOTHING: Dire Straits
This video is notable for two things… I mean other than its kick-ass guitar riff of course…
- Those CGI graphics… Woof! But man they were cutting edge back in the day when we first saw them. Seeing them again now, they remind me of what Def Leppard would do a few years later with their LET’S GET ROCKED video.
- And of course, this video is also notable for using the word “Faggot” repeatedly. This is probably the only thing anyone under the age of 30 knows about this song, and the song has been the target of a lot of cancellation attempts over the years. But anyone who spends even a few minutes researching it quickly discovers a critical piece of context. Dire Straits were actually making fun of the kind of small-minded bigoted blue collar guys they often ran across in the course of being long-haired musicians out in the world.
- OK, so there are three notable things about this song… the third is that the iconic “I want me M…T… Veeeee” lyric was sung by Sting.
Mark Knopfler gave Sting a writing credit for coming up with the “I want my MTV” lyric and, as anyone familiar with music royalties knows, songwriters get paid for, well, writing songs. Unfortunately, Knopfler forgot about this technicality and later had to write Sting a big fat check when the song, with the help of the aforementioned MTV became a mega hit.
HAHA! whoooops