What did Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" mock?

Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” mocked music videos and the lifestyle they appeared to glamorize. The song presents the viewpoint of working-class men watching musicians on television and complaining that performers seemed to earn money without doing ordinary manual labor.

Mark Knopfler wrote the lyrics after hearing a delivery worker complain while watching music videos in an appliance store. The song’s narrator is deliberately narrow-minded and crude, so the track is better understood as a satirical portrayal of envy and resentment than as a simple endorsement of the speaker’s opinions. Sting contributes the distinctive “I want my MTV” refrain.

The song was released in 1985 on Brothers in Arms and became Dire Straits’ biggest commercial success. Its computer-animated video, directed by Steve Barron, was groundbreaking for its depiction of digital human figures and helped make the criticism of music-video culture part of the song’s own visual identity. The controversial language in the lyrics is also frequently discussed separately from the song’s central target.