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Daily Jukebox: Brothers in Arms

Feeling pretty poorly for health reasons, but every so often I trip over one of those classic tunes that doesn't fit into my "Angry Women With Guitars" patch and it gets stuck in my head. Like ELO, Dire Straits is one of those bands that I arguably shouldn't like, because they're everything I don't like about music: bunch of guys with a noodly guitar and an inflate idea of their own position in music. Except that Mark Knopfler is so damned talented that it is undeniable how good the music is.

Brothers in Arms is a slow ballad. It's a quiet, careful song, which is pretty different from most of the stuff that came out of Dire Straits, and it gets stuck. It has it's own gravity, and soon you're humming the deceptively simple melody and imagining the broken, almost-whisper of the lyrics in your head, and wondering if there is someone who can attempt a cover of this song and really do something special with it, like Lorde did with Tears for Fears.

And then there's this long, wandering, random guitar solo that slowly fades away and the song doesn't so much end as peter out and you're left wondering, sitting there, if the song made you sad, or if you were sad and so you listened to the song. Which is a thing.


Anyway, that's what's what.

Obligatory Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu4oy1IRTh8

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