On This Day in 1986: Dire Straits, “Money for Nothing”
31 years ago today, Dire Straits’ blend of computer-animated shenanigans and concert footage walked away with the award for Video of the Year at the 3rd Annual MTV Video Music Awards.
When the awards ceremony kicked off at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, Dire Straits were in a pretty good place in terms of being able to say, “It’s enough just to be nominated,” since the band had, in fact, been nominated for a staggering 11 awards. We’ll go ahead and list them all off for you, just so you can get a feel for just how awe-inspiring the “Money for Nothing” video was considered at the time.
- Viewer’s Choice
- Best Editing in a Video
- Best Art Direction in a Video
- Best Special Effects in a Video
- Best Direction in a Video
- Best Overall Performance in a Video
- Best Stage Performance in a Video
- Most Experimental Video
- Best Concept Video
- Best Group Video
- Video of the Year
Truly, it was the year of Dire Straits at the VMAs! Okay, so maybe it would’ve been more their year if they’d actually ended up winning every single award for which they’d been nominated, but they still walked away with two of ‘em, and since one of those two was the much-coveted Video of the Year (with the other one being Best Group Video, in case you were curious), we’d say it was still an evening worthy of celebration.
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