Ten Albums "Everybody" Owned -- Including Me: Brothers In Arms (#5)

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After a great weekend playing golf I'm back, ready to resume the countdown of big-selling albums through the years that I participated in making a big-selling album. This is a follow-up to a recent countdown, where I looked at ten big-selling albums that I did not own. Here's today's big album. #5: Brothers In Arms - Dire Straits No shock that I owned this one, given that it sold over 30 million copies and was considered a classic of the 1980s. Yeah, the critics didn't like it, but so what if Mark Knopfler likes to write songs about musicians ("Sultans of Swing" on their debut album, "Walk of Life" and "Money for Nothing" here). This albums is such a beautiful mash-up of sounds, from the rock of "Money for Nothing" (taken from a conversation Knopfler heard in an electronics store between two employees watching MTV on the bank of TV sets) to the melodious "So Far Away" to the fun and bouncy "Walk of Life" (heck, even my mother loved that song!) to the jazzy blues of "Your Latest Trick." Now, for JJ. If you've followed the JJ's Vinyl Madness Countdown you know that JJ loathes greatest hits albums that edit the song from the "original" version down to the "single" version time. Here we have an album that was originally issued in edited form! The vinyl version (which is how I originally owned this) clocked in at about 47 minutes. The CD, on the other hand, was just over 55 minutes long, meaning that there was an additional eight minutes of music on the CD as opposed to the album! Why? Well, back then CDs were a fad and albums still ruled the roost, so this album, which was recorded digitally, was aimed at CD buyers. Okay, so you can blame Dire Straits for the death of the LP. But dang, what a great album they ushered the CD era in with!! Brothers In Arms Recorded by Dire Straits Produced by Mark Knopfler and Neil Dorfsman Released in 1985 The gorgeous "Your Latest Trick":