The story of Money for Nothing is weirder than you thought

The publisher wanting a percentage for a melody, against the author will; for a song titled Money for nothing... Case in point!

Don't disrespect the graphics in the video - they're iconic, they have character, and were made 30 years before the blocky graphics of minecraft were a thing.

100 years in the future, kids will be asking "what's mtv" while they jam out to Money for Nothing

Weird Al Yankovic parodied the song and video in his movie UHF in 1989. The song is called Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies. Mark Knopfler gave him permission, but only if he were allowed to play on it. When you hear it, you'll know it's him.

When this song came out i was actually working at an appliance store as a appliance repairman. One of my jobs was to deliver and install microwave ovens, the above stove type, and deliver TV's when they sold them. Needless to say i loved this song!

I tried learning this on guitar Using Mark's finger picking style instead of a pick Guess what happened ? I got a blister on my finger & a blister on my thumb !

The whole album is a masterpiece

And one additional story – from the Hungarian point of view – regarding the music video itself: The two additional music videos in the video (at 1::50 and 3::00 in the official music video) were taken in Budapest while Dire Straits were touring in Hungary. The director, Steve Barron – knowing that Knopfler isn't into music videos at all – traveled to Budapest to convince Mark about the concept of the music video. According to reports, Mark was not at all impressed with Barrett traveling so much for him. So here is how it happened that the first ever Hungarian pop band having been shown on MTV (in the later award winning Dire Straits video) was the pop group "Első Emelet" ("First Floor" in English). In the other video (Ian Pearson Band) you see a Hungarian model-actress and yes, the fictional band was named after one of the CGI artists of this masterpiece.

You missed a pretty massive part of the accidental guitar tone. The reason they thought it sounded so great was because they didn't realize there was a wah pedal in the chain that was inadvertently turned on and in a partially cocked position. It gave it a very mid-forward tone much like what Billy Gibbons would sometimes have. Without that, you don't get anywhere near the guitar tone as it was otherwise set up. When they said they couldn't replicate it afterwards, that was why. They hadn't realized for quite some time later that there was a wah pedal turned on. In fact they had already broken down all the equipment and finished recording the whole album before realizing the wah was in the mix of that particular song.

When I was little my dad was a truck driver, and one day he heard this tune for the first time on the radio and it so happened he was moving a truckload of refrigerators.

To anyone who doesn’t know, better help were caught selling their customers data, don’t use them

The alterations and omissions of this song’s 2nd verse represent one of the earlier examples of cancel culture before there was a cancel culture.

Of note regarding the CGI in Money for Nothing video is that the Bosch FGS-4000 video graphics system used could produce more complex graphics (though obviously still extremely primitive by today's standards) and the boxy style seemed to be a deliberate aesthetic choice. I think that because of its extreme simplicity it's aged incredibly well compared to much other CGI.

The iconic album cover was another accident. There was a bad storm during the time they were recording that did some damage to the building. After it passed, the sky was spectacular. Knopfler was carrying the National resonator guitar near the swimming pool and held it up to the sky for their photographer, who was snapping the view. The result was so good, they made it the album cover. A few attempts were made to reshoot it better, but nothing worked as well as the first quickly snapped shot. That’s how John Isley told it.

The computer animation is fantastic wouldn't change it

When this song came out, I was in graduate business school and wrote a parody called “Money for Nothing/I Want My MBA.”

The song was an anthem for people selling HiFi in the 80s. And the thrill of that guitar riff played loud sold a lot of systems. Fond memories.

I lived in Montserrat in 2008, I met George Martin and visited what was left of Air studio after the volcano. I was there planning an aquaponic project, Sir George wanted me to convert the swimming pool into a fish pond. I didn't know this song was recorded there, beautiful place, tragic what the volcano did, the studio was basically a shell when I was there. A lot of great music was made there; Synchronicity, Steel Wheels, Too Low for Zero...

I've heard comments from people who hadn't been born yet when this song came out wondering "where they got that unusual animation" or simply, "That's so cute." I guess only those of us who there look at it now and notice how drastically different it is. If you don't know how limited computer animation was back then you would assume that all the options of today were available then and that the style was deliberately chosen.