Dire Straits’ “Walk Of Life” has officially passed a major streaming milestone. The track has officially ascended into the Spotify Billions Club, becoming part of an elite group of streaming tracks to surpass the milestone. It’s Dire Straits’ second track to hit the benchmark, after their song “Sultans Of Swing.”
Released as part of their massive 1985 album Brothers In Arms, “Walk Of Life” was written by Mark Knopfler, the band’s lead singer and guitarist. The track was released as the third single from the album, after “Money For Nothing” and “Brothers In Arms,” and was actually not intended to be a single—just a B-side—until drummer Ed Bicknell heard it being mixed and convinced Knopfler to make the track a single. The song ultimately reached number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, and performed well internationally, reaching the top ten in Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
The track combines rock and blues sounds and describes a performer busking in the subway, playing old songs like “Mack The Knife,” “My Sweet Lovin’ Woman”, and “I Got A Woman” for the commuters passing by. “I saw a photograph of a kid playing a guitar in a subway, turning his face to the wall to get a good reverb,” Knopfler recalled of the song’s creation years later in an interview. “When I started playing the guitar, because I didn’t have an amplifier, I’d put the head of the guitar on the arm of a chair and put my head on the guitar to try and get into a loud noise. It kinda reminded me of that, I suppose.”
Brothers In Arms is one of the defining albums of the 1980s, and currently sits as the eighth best-selling album in the history of the United Kingdom. The album also topped charts all over the world, including in the United States, where it has been certified nine-times platinum. In the U.K., it is 15-times platinum.
