Money for Nothing is een song die gebaseerd is op een TV-huishoudapparaten-winkel die Mark Knopfler hoorde terwijl die de hele tijd zat te schelden op 'luie muzikanten' die zonder iets te hoeven doen veel geld verdienden:
quote:
The lead character in “Money for Nothing” is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/custom kitchen/refrigerator/microwave appliance store. He’s singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. 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. I actually used “little faggot,” but there are a couple of good “motherfuckers” in there. I wanted to do a second version that way but I never had time. I’d still love to be able to do it. Even if just the band had it, because it would be the real version. I mean that is the way people speak. I think people still get the general idea. You can use other words that will suggest the general feel.
It also has to do with the context in which a song’s received. If we walk into a hardware store and hear someone say, “Look at that motherfucker” it means nothing to us, but if you hear it in a pop song …
If you hear it in New York it means nothing. If you’re living in Tallahassee then maybe it’s a different thing. There is no way that I would expect people to receive all that in the spirit in which it was intended. They’d probably think I was just being vulgar.
"Whatever you feel like: Life’s not one color, nor are you my only reader" - Ausonius, Epigrammata 25