To quote the great Nelson Muntz: “Ha, HA!”

With that being said, enjoy:

Featuring an opening with Sting singing “I want my MTV” to the same notes of “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”, the song was supposed to be more of a Rolling-Stones ballad but a riff played during the click track took over the rest of the composition. Mark Knopfler spoke of the inspiration to the song:

The lead character in “Money for Nothing” is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/​custom kitchen/​refrigerator/​microwave appliance store. He’s singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real….

According to Knopfler, he had visited an appliance store in New York City. At the back of the store, a wall of televisions were all tuned to MTV. Knopfler said that standing next to him, watching the TVs, there was a male employee, dressed in a baseball cap, work boots, and a checkered shirt, who was delivering boxes. As they watched MTV, the man said things like, “What are those, Hawaiian noises?… That ain’t workin’,” etc. Knopfler requested a pen to write some of these lines down, and eventually put them to music.

And now you know.