Dire Straits "Money for Nothing'' - Problematic or just a great F'king song?

It’s been dropped for being dated and not aging well.

It's a pretty homophobic and ignorant lyric. Some gay jokes I can tolerate or even laugh at - but this one is deliberately saying that gay people don't deserve wealth and fame as much as crusty ass Mark Knopfler does.

I think it's pointing out you shouldn't underestimate or judge someone by appearance. It shouldn't be censored on the radio.

i thought he was talking about george michael.

It hasn't been dropped on Phoenix radio. The word is just omitted.

No, R2, the lyrics were about some blue collar guys, some workers who are moving heavy stuff around in the store see a rock 'n' roll star on TV and they comment how he is not doing proper job, but plying guitar and how he is rich and getts money for nothing and chicks for free. The rock star is not gsy obviously since he gets chicks for free, but they call him a faggot because of his looks, long hair, earrings, make up and his mannerism.

Well until right now I never knew because aside from “checks for free” “microwave oven” and “I want my MTV” I never knew what the fuck they were saying.

It's fine.

The faggot is not literal, it means that the straight musician is flamboyant and not masculine from POV of workers, a faggot and yet chicks are throwing themselves on him.

The song is a pretty obvious satire on the bigotry and ignorance and transparent envy of "real" blue-collar men towards pop musicians whom they perceive as effete and overprivileged, as r6 points out.

I have no idea whether radio stations still play it, but it's a clever song that is anything but homophobic. The ignorance is on the part of those that don't get it.

Oh, for God's sake, it's not homophobic. The lyrics are meant to convey the mindset of somebody who has contempt for homosexuals (and musicians, too) who make tons of money and get lots of "chicks" by doing nothing but "bangin' on bongos" and wearing makeup and big hair. The numbskulls who think it's homophobic must also think that Randy Newman's "Short People" was about bigotry towards short people.

I'm glad some of the posters here get it. They're making fun of the blue collar guys who are saying this stuff. You aren't supposed to agree with that point of view.

It's like thinking Norman Lear was a racist because of Archie Bunker.

The use of the slurs shows how ignorant the narrator is. He knows nothing about the music business or muscians.

Keith Richards mentioned how American rednecks called Stones English faggots because of their look back in 70s somewhere in Midwest and they were almost beaten up on few occasions.

The original version of the song is banned in Canada, but the bowdlerized version is legal.

The look and mannerism of pop stars must have been confusing for macho blue collar guys. They are real men, always take care not to look or act like sissies in the slightest and break their backs for few bucks, while some guy who looks like a transvestite (imagine young Jagger or Duran Duran later) is a rich pussyhound with all hot models and groupies jumping on his dick.

OP, are you trying to cancel this song?

It's a great oldie hit and I hear it all the time.

[quote]Well until right now I never knew because aside from “checks for free”

You just might want to give it another listen. Since that isn't the lyric.

R9, the lyrics don't have any girls throwing themselves at the 'faggot'. You are being apologist.

[quote]See the little faggot with the earring and the make up Yeah, buddy, that's his own hair That little faggot got his own jet airplane That little faggot, he's a millionaire

R6, R11 and R12, it's still homophobic because it's putting homophobia in the fucking song - who cares about the context? Some of you are a bit dim.

How about a song from the POV of a racist saying N*gger this and N*gger that? It's just art, right? It's a classic song, right? We're supposed to laugh at how backwards the racist is, and all learn something? Give me a fucking break.

Knopfler was an asshole for including those lyrics in that song, and for his lack of sensitivity on the subject, that makes him and the song homophobic. To boot, he even did a 'walkback' version where he changed 'faggot' to 'queenie'....so you know he realized he messed up if he had felt the pressure to do that....and it's not much better that way. If he wanted to show blue collar guys remarking about flamboyant 80s glam rockers, there were other ways to do it. "Bowie" for example... or he could even have lyrics remarking about how easy it looks for any rock star to get rich and chicks for free - why bring 'faggots' into this?

I get that blue collar guys did, and still do, talk about faggots, but why do we need that in a classic rock song? Knopfler utilized a hate speech word in his song, thought he was clever about it, and he normalized the word even more. I was a teen in the 80s, and was called faggot most every day - it didn't sit well with me that the boys in high school now had a fucking song lyric to sing to me. Bigots and idiots don't care about the context included in the song.

I'll die on this hill, PC as it sounds in 2022.

If I recall correctly, when the video hit MTV back in the day, they cut those lyrics out of it and just swapped out an instrumental part of the song.

Original title: Sultans of Anal

[quote] it's still homophobic because it's putting homophobia in the fucking song - who cares about the context? Some of you are a bit dim.

A lot of people care about the context because they GET it. You don't. You are pathologically woke.

[quote]For lyrics, Knopfler decided to assume the perspective of a blue-collar worker. The words were inspired by an actual appliance-outlet employee who was making off-color remarks while staring at a wall of televisions playing MTV.

[quote]“I wrote the song when I was actually in the store,” Knopfler told Bill Flanagan in the book Written in My Soul. “I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real. It just went better with the song; it was more muscular.”

[quote]Which video the store employee happened to be watching was never revealed, but Nikki Sixx believes it was his band. “Dire Straits’ ‘Money for Nothing’ was about Motley Crue,” he told Blender magazine in 2007. “‘Money for nothing and the chicks for free … that little faggot got his own jet airplane.’ They were in a store that sells televisions, and there was a row of TVs all playing Motley Crue — and that’s where it came from.”

[quote]It's a great oldie hit and I hear it all the time.

Same here.

I never even knew that was the lyric. Was it commented on at the time?

It still gets played. OP is just looking for things to complain about

R23 is a self-hating Republican who shits on all the "woke" people who fought for gay rights. It sure wasn't conservatives like himself

It's only problematic if you're a fucking idiot.

Knopfler has more money than god. He had more money than Michael Jackson in his hey day. The little jew boy is a millionaire. The song is not offensive at all, it's fucking brilliant. Maybe get a blister on your little finger, maybe get a blister on your thumb.

I thought they were referring to Prince when singing about that little fa****.

How about Patti Smith’s “Rock N Roll Ni****”?

Patti Smith had a "song" where she's singing "N-word, N-word, N-word, N-word" over and over. I suppose it was "Rock and Roll N-word." Why has she never been called out about that?

You know how bitchy fags can be.

The singer-speaker is a low-brow observer who thinks there is no work in the music video business.

I never was confused. Or offended. And please don't tell me I should be offended, which is absurd,

But I understand why people don't want to hear the word. Context, after all, is critical for everyone except people fetishizing the "n word."

I was a little offended at first but then when I read the context, I became less offended. Now I am not offended.

Since when do you have to install microwave ovens and color TV's? You just plug 'em in and it's always been that way.

R36 One of the poors.

R36, the lyrics go....

[quote] We got to install microwave ovens

[quote] Custom kitchen deliveries

[quote]We got to move these refrigerators

[quote] We got to move these color TVs

Nothing about installing TVs, and plenty of microwaves do need to be installed.

[quote]Some of you are a bit dim.

When you go there with it, you're really asking for incivility in return.

[quote]How about a song from the POV of a racist saying N*gger this and N*gger that? It's just art, right? It's a classic song, right? We're supposed to laugh at how backwards the racist is, and all learn something? Give me a fucking break.

Randy Newman, who has already come up in the thread, did exactly that on songs like "Rednecks" and "Christmas in Capetown." He also wrote from the point of view of a violent (possibly closeted) homophobe in "Half a Man." The only difference is that those were album tracks rather than #1 Billboard singles.

Songwriting is a rich and varied tradition. Listeners of pop music may be conditioned to believe that singer/songwriters are ALWAYS expressing their own views or singing about their own experiences, in the manner of Queen Bey and Taylor Swift and their other idols, but that isn't the only way to do it. For generations, lyricists have written "in character" for shows. The Dire Straits song and the Newman songs are not show tunes, but they are more like first-person short stories. The writer is putting himself in the position of someone very different from him.

He wrote the song after hearing workers berate the videos that were on MTV in an appliance store he was shopping in. Mark is actually a friend of my brother and a wonderful person.

Mark Knopfler wrote several gay-baiting songs and I don't know why you all are defending him. (There's another one called "Les Boys" that clearly wasn't intended to be flattering.)

R6 belongs in the Bad Take Hall of Fame.

[quote]Patti Smith had a "song" where she's singing "N-word, N-word, N-word, N-word" over and over. I suppose it was "Rock and Roll N-word." Why has she never been called out about that?

Lennon was called out for singing woman is the nigger of the world, but mostly by white men.

OP Here

I love the song and I get the message, the story it's telling. I wasn't saying it was problematic because of it was homophobic. I was thinking just because of the USE of the word faggot. Besides, the irony is STING is one of those "FAGGOTS" the working class men would have been talking about and Dire Straits weren't the butchest themselves. So I think they are all in on the joke.

A rock star barely does any work at all - "Maybe get a blister on your little finger, Maybe get a blister on your thumb" but gets all of the chicks and money. The blue collar guy is jealous and says he should have learned to play the guitar. It's a great song and the Anthem of the MTV Generation.

[quote] And he's up there, what's that? Hawaiian noises? Bangin' on the bongos like a chimpanzee

Is that racist against Polynesians too? JFC

Always hated that lyric, or at least the F word. I know that the line is spoken from the point of view of the workers but how many of those workers and others simply heard the word and thought hey it's ok to use the F word. If he used the N word and the workers were watching Prince or MJ do you think that the song would have even been heard.

The only part of the song I like, that main guitar riff, came from Mark Knopfler trying to sound Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.

I prefer Les Boys and all the Nazi, gay, S&M imagery

It's both, OP. I hate the cut with the faggot line, I understand the context that was intended but it still pulls me out of the song. I prefer the cut without it bc it's an otherwise great song.

R36, the lyric is "we've got to [bold]install microwave ovens[/bold], custom kitchen deliveries, we've got to move these refrigerators, we've got to [bold]move these color TVs." [/bold]

Over the range microwaves need to be installed, especially as part of a "custom kitchen" where presumably the entire kitchen is being remodeled and refurbished at once. They mention only moving color TVs, not installing them. The lyrics are accurate.

Sirius plays it on a couple of different channels - the version on 80s on 8 is definitely cut, but I have heard both versions on Classic Rewind.

It's very problematic. I should know.

Mark Knopfler explained it years ago, saying (IIRC/paraphrasing) that he’s speaking in the voice of the movers and how they were simplistically mocking the new wave on MTV - the androgynous performers wearing makeup. I always took that to mean that he was making fun of the working class moving guys for being close-minded.

sting sings backup, I always found that ironic

"Les Boys" is a good song. I always though it was gay positive:

Les boys do cabaret

Les boys are glad to be gay

They’re not afraid now

Disco bar in Germany

Les boys are glad to be

Upon parade now

Les boys got leather straps

Les boys got SS caps

But they got no gun now

Get dressed up get a little risque

Got to do a little s & m these days

It’s all in fun now

Les boys come on again

For the high class whores

And the businessmen

Who drive in their Mercedes Benz

To a disco bar in old Munchen

They get the jokes that the D.J. . makes

They get nervous and they make mistakes

They’re bad for business

Some tourist take a photograph

Les boys don’t get one laugh

He says they’re useless

Late at night when they’re gone away

Les boys dream of jean genet

High heel shoes and a black beret

And the posters on the wall that say

Les boys do cabaret

Les boys are glad to be gay

He doesn’t sing that line any more in concert

It's just a good song from the old days.

[quote]If he used the N word and the workers were watching Prince or MJ do you think that the song would have even been heard.

On this I agree. I think most wokes are extremely stupid and have only learned that the N word is forbidden in any context, while they don’t notice faggot, cunt, bitch, Russkie and other slurs.

R58

Not that I approve of any slur, but the N-word is worse than the other ones you mentioned because of the history of Black people in the U.S., the way they continue to be treated, and their relative power compared to other groups in society. It's also not true that people ignore other racial pejoratives.

R59 My dear, male homosexuality was and still is criminally persecuted. Homosexuals are almost invariably victims of violence in their youth and also in adulthood in big part of world. I don't believe that in US red states homosexuals are less discriminated than blacks.

As for misogyny is it enough to mention that women are still genitally mutilated in Africa and Middle east.

R60 Much of what you say is true but gays can “pass”, Blacks cannot.

R61 Speak for yourself on the "passing" thing.

I was somewhat expecting Little Richard so I almost spit out my coffee. Excellent pic!

It used to bother me, but no more, not for years!

I don't find it "problematic" (I hate that word; it just means someone has a problem), but if it was written today, I would hope Knopfler wouldn't use the word.

People bring up the Patti Smith song; I've never heard it on the radio, but stations used to play Elvis Costello's "Oliver's Army" and X's "Los Angeles" all the time, and they use the same word. They're also really great songs.

Nothing that any of those people have done or said is one-thousandth as offensive as Eric Clapton.

In da Club. They block out,

"You the faggot ass nigga tryna hold me out back"

It's not censored it simply re-edite, with the word replace. I'm a music connoiseru and I don't remember that version when the song was out.

I thought the "little faggot" referred to Prince. Didn't he have a lot of women, singing with, hanging around with, dating/married to, etc.?

Exactly, R51. Both versions are on SiriusXM at any given time.

I always thought about Boy George and the Duran’s for sure when he sings that lyric. Something obvious, which, actually, turned out not to be obvious at all.

It still amazes me not a one Duranie was gay, looking at you Nick. 😬

Does no one understand narrative voice any more? Next, you'll be telling me that Tom Petty was really Spike.

Only Mark Knopfler can say for sure, but I think the lyric was widely understood to be a comment about Boy George, and the sense that Culture Club had fame and fortune when it was perceived they weren't a "real" rock band and didn't deserve it.

It could certainly have also meant George Michael or Prince.....I'm less convinced re Prince just because he had so many women in his videos, and while his sexuality has been debated to death here, I think it's clear he was never completely gay. Boy George makes the most sense to me, given the time the song was written and recorded.

"Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues is a great song that features one of my favorite singers ever (the late, great Kirsty MacColl) - she too is playing a character and at one point, she says to Shane McGowan's character "you scumbag, you maggot // you cheap lousy f*gg*t." I was never deeply offended by this use; it seemed more like an insult to that character versus a homophobic slur, though of course even using it has some homophobic elements. (I've read that Kirsty sang other lyrics at some point after the recording.)

I know Knopfler has claimed it was a "character speaking" and while I understand his argument logically on the one hand, I hate this fucking song with a grand passion. One, the "character" says f*gg*t not once but THREE times during the course of the song. And secondly, there wasn't a single person among anyone I grew up around or went to high school with that understood that "someone" was doing a "character." When they pulled my hair, or gave me a bloody nose, or pushed books out of my hands in school, they knew that the number one song from an album that stayed at number one for over two months gave them all the permission they ever wanted to say F*GG*T F*GG*T F*GG*T.

R4, George Michael wasn't that successful in 1985 to merit a reference in a song by a band of Dire Straits' status.

The lyrics are basically verbatim comments made by some movers & installers in Mark Knopfler's home.

I get that the lyrics are sung in character, but I'm with r74. I would just as soon Dire Straits hadn't released the song. It reminds me of how much I hate the word "cis," because it sounds just like the first syllable in "sissy."

That's how many people spoke back in the 1980s. The song is a product of it's time. It's more of a commentary on the attitude of entitlement and the insults made by the common working class person rather than degrading attitude towards gays by the songwriter.

Listen to his magnificent Brothers in Arms instead.

Nah, I'll pass.

re Wham!

Their second studio album Make It Big in 1984 was a worldwide pop smash hit, charting at number one in both the UK and the United States.

I probably made too much of the "little" in the "little faggot" line. Prince is the only candidate who's truly little.

A PS to my comment back at R74 - I forgot to include this:

"Yeah buddy, that's his own hair" was the other thing that really points at Boy George. While George M and Prince had somewhat longish hair for men at that time, Boy George was one of the first public figures we saw that had hair the length, shape and style we had usually seen on women.

Get a grip r74

[quote]George Michael wasn't that successful in 1985 to merit a reference in a song by a band of Dire Straits' status.

He'd had three consecutive #1 songs in the U.S. in late '84/early '85. Even that early on, no one was really buying that Wham! was an equal partnership.

He was also a big enough star to be included in NBC's Motown Returns to the Apollo special, which wasn't exactly teeming with white guys, obviously.

But the guy with the earring and the makeup in the Dire Straits song could be anyone. It could be a one-hit wonder. It could be a no-hit wonder.

"we had all the big time bands on the run, boy..."

[quote] George Michael wasn't that successful in 1985 to merit a reference in a song by a band of Dire Straits' status.

George Michael was a huge global pop star in 1985.

I've always hated this song, and "Walk Of Life" is even worse.

Blow it out your ass, R84.

R74, a shorter and squeaky clean cover version of Fairytale of New York.

David Lee Roth and his assless chaps are a good match.

[bold]The song had to have been written before October 1984.[/bold]

From R24:

[quote]The words were inspired by an actual appliance-outlet employee who was making off-color remarks while staring at a wall of televisions playing MTV.

From Wikipedia:

[quote]Brothers in Arms was recorded from October 1984 to February 1985

[quote]"Money for Nothing" is a song by British rock band Dire Straits, the second track on their fifth studio album, Brothers in Arms (1985). It was released as the album's second single on 28 June 1985

Van Halen’s 1984 was released in January 1984, Jump and Panama were released as singles and videos before October and Jump was MTVs #2 video of the year which means it was in heavy rotation. DLR had long hair and he wore makeup and an earring.

Nikki Sixx thought the song was about Motley Crue but how popular were they in 1984?

A list of of the 375 videos released in 1984 is linked below - I skimmed it looking for long or outrageous hair, makeup, and earrings. I don’t know of any bands that had a private plane in 1984, a handful of bands from the list did later but in 1984?

Billy Idol

Thompson Twins

Van Halen

Twisted Sister

Culture Club

Duran Duran

Motley Crue

link ^

and Wham!.

[quote]I don’t know of any bands that had a private plane in 1984, a handful of bands from the list did later but in 1984?

It's written from the point of view of a laborer (probably an older man) who doesn't know the acts by name, let alone which specific ones have their own jet. He just knows they're doing better than he is, although in his mind he works harder. He's speculating.

The writing process was likely "What kind of people would the guy this song is about see if he were unloading furniture/appliances and a television was tuned to MTV." Rather than "The faggot with the earring is supposed to be Rod Stewart, and the mama who's got it sticking in the camera is Madonna."

[quote] It reminds me of how much I hate the word "cis," because it sounds just like the first syllable in "sissy."

Oh, please.

Agree that the word "cis" sucks. But then it's supposed to!

[quote]I don’t know of any bands that had a private plane in 1984, a handful of bands from the list did later but in 1984?

Elvis Presley had a private plane named the Lisa Marie back in the 70s. I am sure by 1984 it was quite common.

[quote]The faggot is not literal, it means that the straight musician is flamboyant and not masculine from POV of workers, a faggot and yet chicks are throwing themselves on him.

That was a really common way that gays were portrayed back in the 1980s, though. The theater gays in my high school were both called "fags" in a very literal sense AND accused of "dressing like that just to get the girls," i.e. the long hair and earrings. High school guys would call glam rockers "fags" and mean it, and might acknowledge that they got the chicks, but didn't fully believe they were straight.

This was mostly based on the fact that everyone assumed every gay in the world was trying to hide it by dating women, because being gay was so awful that it had to be hidden, but gays really couldn't hide it because they all had a natural tendency to be flamboyant and "faggoty."

Reading it in 2022 (when this thread was started) too literally, by claiming that the narrator in the song understands the guy is straight and that "faggot" is merely commenting upon the rock star's flamboyance, is inaccurate.