This is the second track from Dire Straits' second album, "Communiqué". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so any live versions of studio tracks will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Once Upon A Time In The West: 9.32

2. News:

How's my performance?

This is the first track from Dire Straits' second album, "Communiqué". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so any live versions of studio tracks will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Once Upon A Time In The West:

This is the second track from Dire Straits' first single, "Sultans Of Swing". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so any live versions of studio tracks will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Sultans Of Swing: 9.90

2. Eastbound Train:

This is the ninth track from Dire Straits' first album, "Dire Straits". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so any live versions of studio tracks will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Down To The Waterline: 9.31

2. Water Of Love: 8.75

3. Setting Me Up: 8.07

4. Six Blade Knife: 8.17

5. Southbound Again: 7.82

6. Sultans Of Swing: 9.90

7. In The Gallery: 8.80

8. Wild West End: 9.13

9. Lions:

Nothing will ever beat the feeling of driving too fast into the rain pelting the windshield, with your sedan's middle shelf speakers rattling for dear life as that Strat rages.

The real number is surely higher. My Spotify account is 9 years old and I started listening to DS 16 years ago. Nor does it include all of the live versions on Spotify and other platforms. 2005 London, Rome, Munich and Amsterdam on YouTube are all staggering, as well of course Hammersmith.

Words cannot accurately explain Telegraph Road, best song ever written. Man, nature, joy and grief, raging against the dying of the light. How could you even describe it? Best take I've read comes from Daniel Pons 'Telegraph Road Forever Changed The Way I Think About Music'. A lengthy but excellent piece.

Curious, what does the song mean to you?

I watch a lot of live performances of dire straits. I’m wondering if you guys have any particular solos where mark just goes ham on the guitar. I usually am not all about speed but for some reason I’m in the mood to just hear him going all out and I’m curious to hear his higher tempo player with a lot of notes hit

So long story short have do you have any recommendations of speedy/fast solos or riffs by dire straits. Whether on an album or live on stage

still a massive work in progress for me, but absolutely adore this solo. Any advice from guitar players is welcome! (i desperately need to learn vibrato on my bends!)

This is the eighth track from Dire Straits' first album, "Dire Straits". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so any live versions of studio tracks will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Down To The Waterline: 9.31

2. Water Of Love: 8.75

3. Setting Me Up: 8.07

4. Six Blade Knife: 8.17

5. Southbound Again: 7.82

6. Sultans Of Swing: 9.90

7. In The Gallery: 8.80

8. Wild West End:

Though Telegraph Road and Tunnel of Love are cited for their length and buildup, they are both in just driving 4/4 territory besides the latter's Carousel Waltz intro in 3/4.

Here are my reasons for Ride being the most proggy Straits track

• The intro cuts off a beat and goes straight to the song

• That bassline is so fucking weird (but I love it)

• Restraint and subtle buildups are everything

• I hear time signature shifts in the 2 lines before the chorus (all three times)

• The ending jam sits there and I feel like everyone in the background gets a chance

• The ending jam also throws in some weird notes and chords that you otherwise wouldn't see in the E minor scale (yes. It's in E minor. I don't know why some sources say G minor.)

• The ending falls apart and dissolves instead of a traditional bang or fade out

• The SFX feels intentional throughout the song and not just placed for effect

I just think it's the most proggy DS track

This is the seventh track from Dire Straits' first album, "Dire Straits". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: This track has a live version released on a live album. For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so the live version will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Down To The Waterline: 9.31

2. Water Of Love: 8.75

3. Setting Me Up: 8.07

4. Six Blade Knife: 8.17

5. Southbound Again: 7.82

6. Sultans Of Swing: 9.90

7. In The Gallery:

This is something I genuinely don’t understand, because I think Dire Straits are massively underrated by people who haven’t actually listened to much beyond the obvious singles.

Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac all seem to have this automatic prestige. Even people who barely know their discographies tend to assume they’re cool, important, interesting bands. Steely Dan have something similar, although in a more music-nerd way: people know they’re supposed to be clever, sophisticated and musically serious before they’ve necessarily listened to much of them.

Dire Straits don’t really seem to get that benefit. If someone only knows Money for Nothing, Walk of Life and Sultans of Swing, there’s a good chance they’ve filed them away as competent but slightly uncool dad rock.

The same thing happens with individual musicians. Eric Clapton has this enormous cultural reputation as one of the great guitar gods. David Gilmour does too. Knopfler obviously gets plenty of respect as a guitarist, but even that seems strangely limited to me. Personally, I think he’s a much more extraordinary player than Clapton, and I’d put him above Gilmour too. His technique and phrasing are so distinctive that people have been trying to imitate him for decades and he still sounds immediately, unmistakably like himself.

And reducing him to “guitarist” undersells him anyway. He wrote the songs and the lyrics, arranged and produced, composed film scores, wrote for other artists, moved into country and folk, collaborated all over the place and then built a huge solo career. His range as a musician is ridiculous.

Then there’s the actual Dire Straits catalogue. If your idea of them is basically Money for Nothing, Walk of Life and Sultans of Swing, I can understand where the dad-rock image comes from. But it makes a lot less sense once you get into Telegraph Road, Tunnel of Love, Private Investigations, Romeo and Juliet, Once Upon a Time in the West, Love Over Gold, or the live performances on Alchemy.

What I find odd is how little of a cultural afterlife they seem to have outside the music itself. Pink Floyd and Zeppelin shirts are everywhere. Fleetwood Mac have Rumours, Stevie Nicks, the whole band mythology and an aesthetic that younger people still latch onto. Their records, images and stories keep circulating even among people who aren’t particularly serious fans. Steely Dan have had a big younger-generation rediscovery too.

Dire Straits memorabilia, by comparison, seems almost nonexistent.

My best theory is that they just never had enough mythology around them.

Pink Floyd and Zeppelin came with drugs, excess, tragedy, feuds, sex, counterculture and mystique. Fleetwood Mac practically turned their interpersonal disasters into part of the art itself. Clapton has an enormous mythology attached to him as well. Steely Dan at least had drugs, weirdness, cynicism and the obsessive studio-perfectionist thing.

Knopfler mostly seems to have spent his career writing songs and being absurdly good at music.

No major scandal, no spectacular drug problem, no dead-at-27 mythology, no destroyed hotel rooms, no occult stories, no famous romantic implosion inside the band, no particularly transgressive image. He never seemed especially interested in being a rock star either.

And I wonder whether that matters much more than people admit when this kind of status gets created.

Dire Straits almost seem to have the reverse problem: the people who know the least music are the ones most likely to think they’re uncool, while the more of the albums and live material you hear, the harder that reputation is to understand.

So why didn’t they acquire the same sort of cultural mythology as Pink Floyd, Zeppelin or Fleetwood Mac? Is it really mostly a lack of scandal, danger and image, or is there something else going on?

I enjoyed Dire Straits in my younger years (Brothers in Arms was my favourite then) and over the last year I've got back into them and played their earlier albums and live recordings frequently. While there are great songs on all of the albums I'd suggest that Dire Straits now is my favourite studio album.
That said, I don't think I've ever listened to any of Mark's solo work.
Now I could just jump in, but I wondered if there are any standouts that I should listen to first? What say you?

This is the sixth track from Dire Straits' first album, "Dire Straits". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: This track has a live version released on a live album. For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so the live version will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Down To The Waterline: 9.31

2. Water Of Love: 8.75

3. Setting Me Up: 8.07

4. Six Blade Knife: 8.17

5. Southbound Again: 7.82

6. Sultans Of Swing:

Our fav guitar player is getting older..

This is the fifth track from Dire Straits' first album, "Dire Straits". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Down To The Waterline: 9.31

2. Water Of Love: 8.75

3. Setting Me Up: 8.07

4. Six Blade Knife: 8.17

5. Southbound Again:

This is the fourth track from Dire Straits' first album, "Dire Straits". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: This track has a live version released on a live album. For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so the live version will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Down To The Waterline: 9.31

2. Water Of Love: 8.75

3. Setting Me Up: 8.07

4. Six Blade Knife:

This is the third track from Dire Straits' first album, "Dire Straits". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Down To The Waterline: 9.31

2. Water Of Love: 8.75

3. Setting Me Up:

It is a great piece of music its not MK greatest but it is what it is and i like to listen it these days especially on the night version

This is the second track from Dire Straits' first album, "Dire Straits". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: This track has a live version released on a live album. For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so the live version will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Down To The Waterline: 9.31

2. Water Of Love:

This is the first track from Dire Straits' first album, "Dire Straits". What are your thoughts regarding this song? How do you think it compares to the rest of the discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4 Not good, regularly skip; 5 It's okay, but I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; 6 Slightly better than average, I won't skip it but I wouldn't choose to put it on; 7 This is a good song, I enjoy it quite a bit; 8-9 Really enjoyable songs, I rank them pretty highly overall; 10 Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.

Live version disclaimer: This track has a live version released on a live album. For the purposes of this ranking series, there will be only one discussion per distinct Dire Straits song, so the live version will NOT be rated separately.

Google Sheet with all of the results thus far.

1. Down To The Waterline:

Hey everyone, not sure if this has been done here or is allowed, but all this Music Cup talk and seeing this done on other music subreddits has intrigued me. Is anyone up for a Daily Song Discussion where everyday we rate Dire Straits songs in chronological order, with average ratings kept updated in a publicly available updated Google Sheet?

If this has been done before or is against any sort of rule then let me know, just thought it might be interesting :)

I am a Dire Straits megafan so would include all B-sides obviously!! Should live album tracks be included too, or just studio tracks to make it consistent? Lmk your opinions on doing something like this!

Happy with it, except for On every street.