Finally cornered after a show in Budapest, Knopfler was pressured to sign off on the clip. Warner Bros, in cahoots with MTV, knew they needed something more than just a band playing to really sell the song. Mark Knopfler really didn't want to make the wildly popular animated video for 'Money for Nothing'ĭire Straits singer and guitarist was a fan of keeping things simple. Twenty years later in 2006, the 25th anniversary edition of the record won for Best Surround Sound Album.ģ. The lush production on the record earned it the award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical at the 1986 Grammys.

Brothers in Arms won two different Grammys twenty years apart 'Within two years we were fighting to get our CDs manufactured, because the entire worldwide manufacturing capacity was overwhelmed by demand for a single rock title (Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms). See, we originally oriented Rykodisc to be for the audiophile, specialty market, which we all expected to be where the CD would be for its first 5-10 years at least,' Rykodisc co-founder Robert Simonds told Inside Hook.

'Honestly, the fast growth of the CD almost killed us. It was the first compact disc to sell over a million copies. Given the album's pristine and crystal-clear sound, Brothers in Arms exploded on the format. When the CD format was introduced in 1982, it didn't take long for the shiny silver discs with the high-end sound to become wildly popular with serious music fans. It's the album that jump-started compact disc sales So let's pull back the doors, bust open the books and take a look inside Dire Straits' 1985 classic, Brothers in Arms.ġ. It topped the chart for nine weeks over the course of a 97-week run. Released on May 13, 1985, Brothers in Arms hit #1 for the week of August 31, 1985. Propelled by the time-defining single, 'Money for Nothing,' Brothers in Arms now stands as one of the best-selling albums of all time. But nothing prepared the world for what would happen years later when the group released its fifth studio album, Brothers in Arms. Dire Straits was a successful British rock band who'd struck gold in America with the band's very first single, 'Sultans of Swing,' in 1978.

First dire straits album