Friday Morning Videos: "Money for Nothing"

Last week's "Beat It" may be about as popular and influential a music video as was ever made during its heydey, but I would argue that this video of the Dire Straits song as the more important video by far. The song was already a pretty unconventional one, to say the least, just on the basis of the lyrics; the self-referential, experimental nature of the video only emphasized the possibility that the power and general coolness of pop music could be extended and actually supplemented by videos, and not just merely complemented by them. Seriously, it's a great song, but how well would it have done without all that weird, funny, sometimes outrageous imagery? Speaking of which, this is the first time most of us--certainly it was the first time I--had ever seen a computer-generated visual that actually moved, so that's a bit of groundbreaking right there. I wanted my MTV indeed.