A classic song can come to its writer any number of ways. Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits talks about how the idea for “Money for Nothing” fell into his lap.

“Sometimes, some songs have like a situation. You walk into a situation and you see it. ‘Money for Nothing,’ I was out with my wife and we were buying some kitchen stuff in New York. And it had all these microwave ovens and cookers and kitchen display unit in the front window and it had a wall of TV sets at the back of the store — it was a big appliance store. They were all tuned to MTV and the guy, the protagonist in ‘Money for Nothing’, he was there and he was just talking about all these videos that were on. I just started spying on him and…bang, there’s the situation.”