Money for Nothing (song)
Money for Nothing (English for: "Money for nothing") is a song by the British rock band Dire Straits , which they released in 1985 on their album Brothers in Arms .
After being released as a single in June 1985, the piece became an international success. With a three-week first place on the American Billboard charts , it was the band's most successful single. In the band's British homeland, the song reached number 4, in Germany, where it only became popular over time, number 19. Noteworthy were the controversial text, the innovative music video - the first computer-generated music video ever - and a cameo Appearance by the British musician Sting , who sings the introduction and accompanying voice during the fadeout in falsetto : "I want my MTV". The video for the song was the first that the music broadcaster MTV Europe aired when it launched on August 1, 1987. The piece won a Grammy in 1985 for "Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Singing Group".
text
Money for Nothing is an ironic examination of the music and media business in the form of a so-called role lyric . The author does not “speak” himself, but takes on the perspective of a character who has nothing to do with the music business. This simple worker goes about his job and romps about rock stars who, in his opinion, get “cash for nothing”. His contempt is already evident in the first line of text when he describes the pop stars as “pipes” or “bums” (“Now look at them yo-yos”) .
In the video you can see two movers who deliver the fridges and TV sets that have been sung about and who are inadvertently exposed to sound from the devices while they are sweaty ("We gotta move these refrigerators, gotta move these color TVs ... ", "They play the guitar on the MTV ... That ain't working! ") . Knopfler deliberately fools himself because he lets this fictional character scold the guitarist, of all people, who he was in his band himself. The text receives a special time-critical dimension with its view of the music television of the 1980s. Appearances and the sheer surface ensure that musicians have a hit and are present in public through the music channels. According to Knopfler, Money for Nothing is based on a situation that he himself observed in a television shop in New York .
“I watched [...] these two workers in their work gear, dungarees, safety shoes and everything. [...] You stood in front of the shelf and looked at the screens. MTV was shown on all televisions and the music video images were played back umpteen times. Suddenly the two began to swear and gossip about the videos. At first I wasn't really listening. As the curses became clearer and clearer, however, I noticed. One of them said to his buddy: 'Now look at these fagots. They wear earrings and are made up. And they also get money for this shit they do. ' These sentences were the initial spark for the song. I borrowed pen and paper at the cash register. I wanted to write down every word they said in the shop. "
Sting participation
The musician Sting happened to be on vacation on the Caribbean island of Montserrat near the Dire Straits recording studio and was spontaneously invited as a guest singer. At the beginning of the song, Sting sings the sentence "I want my MTV" with a head voice , before the band, led by an aggressive drum kit, and Mark Knopfler begin with the lyrics. Sting is also responsible for the vocals in the fadeout, which lasts almost two minutes in the album version. The melody of the lyrics “ I want my MTV ” is intentionally based on that of the Police song Don't Stand so Close to Me . Knopfler and Sting usually sing the common lines of text, rhythmically slightly offset. In an interview, Knopfler explained that this was intentional and a small allusion to the fact that in the mid-1980s pop music split into two camps due to the increasingly important videos, which represented different (so to speak "asynchronous" and no longer harmonizing) opinions whether the increasing visualization of pop music would inevitably mean its downfall or not.
reception
At the time, the role lyric was not recognized by all listeners who described the song as sexist, homophobic and the like and assumed that Knopfler was serious about what he was singing. The accusation of homophobia is particularly inflamed by the use of the word "fagot" (English "fagot") in the album version of the piece. In later versions the word "maggot" ("Made") is used here.
Against Sting's will, A&M Records insisted that he be named as a co-writer on the cover of the record and that A&M would share in the record's sales.
The video for the song was named Video of the Year and Best Group Video at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards .
Walk of Life as a counter-argument to Money for Nothing
On the album Brothers in Arms follows Money for Nothing the song Walk of Life . Mark Knopfler stated in an interview that he had said in the lines "And after all the violence and double talk" , "There's just a song in all the trouble and the strife", "You do the walk, you do the walk of life" want to set an opposite pole in terms of content to the statement in Money for Nothing . Ultimately, only music (i.e. art) is the only thing that can save you in life and not all the hype that is going on around you.
Others
Until 2005, the intro of Money for Nothing served as the theme music for the documentary program 37 Grad .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ BBC News: MTV ready to rock Russia as of February 4, 2010
- ^ Grammy database ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b Pop Special Magazin , 9/1985
- ↑ a b Rolling Stone # 461, November 21, 1985
- ↑ Official music video "Money for nothing" from 1985 , the word "fagot" can be found u. a. at 1:49, accessed October 30, 2016
- ↑ Live recording from 1997 , the word "maggot" can be found among others. a. at 3:19, accessed October 30, 2016
- ^ Clarkson, Wensley: Sting, The Biography . London, 2000. ISBN 1-85782-319-2
- ^ VMA 1986 - MTV Video Music Awards. In: MTV.vom. Retrieved July 5, 2019 .
- ↑ Published 1985 by Chariscourt Ltd. / Rondor Music (London) Ltd.