Remember When Sting Helped Dire Straits Write Their Only No. 1 Hit?

Dire Straits had plenty of hits, beginning with “Sultans Of Swing”, a Top 5 single that came out in 1978. Dire Straits released several other songs that did fairly well on the radio. Still, only one song reached the No. 1 spot in the United States. In 1985, Dire Straits spent three weeks at the top of the charts with “Money For Nothing”. The song was written by Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler and fellow rock star Sting. It is part of Brothers In Arms, Dire Straits’ fifth studio album.

“Money For Nothing” says in part, “And he’s up there, what’s that? Hawaiian noises? / He’s banging on the bongos like a chimpanzee / Oh, that ain’t working, that’s the way you do it / Get your money for nothing, get your chicks for free.”

Knopfler had the idea to write “Money For Nothing” thanks to a commercial starring The Police. At the time, Sting was the lead singer of The Police.

“I’d seen the Police doing an MTV advert, saying ‘I want my MTV,’ just saying it all together,” Knopfler recalls to Ultimate Classic Rock. He had the idea to put the lyrics of “Money For Nothing” to something similar to “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”, a hit The Police released in 1980.

 “I remember saying to the guys, ‘I’d really like to get Sting to do this,’” Knopfler recalls. “We knew them anyway because we’d done a lot of gigs together in Germany. One of them said, ‘That’s fine, because he’s here on holiday.’”

How Dire Straits Got Sting To Be a Part of “Money For Nothing”

Knopfler knew that the melody of “Money For Nothing” was very similar to “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”, which was written solely by Sting. Instead of changing the melody, he gladly made Sting a co-writer on the song.

“Because I’d used the five notes from ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’,  that’s how the co-writing thing happened,” Knopfler explains. “Which is fine. It’s absolutely fine with me, and it worked out well. I remember quite clearly Sting coming into the studio and saying, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Nobody’s fighting!’”

When Knopfler wrote “Money For Nothing”, his goal was to be on MTV, which began in 1981. The song later became one of MTV’s most popular videos, thanks to the song beginning with the line, “I want my, I want my MTV,” which was repeated four times to start the song.

Photo by Pete Still/Redferns