A little reggae, a little electronica, a little ragged roots music mix into a truly strange brew. UK band Wille & the Bandits do get there eventually, but by the time they do, the context has been so warped you barely notice. Many covers of this song basically seem like an excuse to play the guitar riff. That low croon, coupled with a slide guitar playing its weepiest, makes for a truly heart-rending version. This Australian singer’s voice is a dead ringer for his countryman Nick Cave, though the latter is several decades his senior. The best by a hair is Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders. Perhaps a run of wonderful covers in the last few years made me think the song was more popular than it was. Somewhat to my surprise, “So Far Away” isn’t among them. Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders – So Far Awayįour songs from this album more or less tie with “Sultans of Swing” and “Romeo and Juliet” for the most-covered Dire Straits song. So today we pay tribute through tributes, covers of the huge hits and the lesser-known tracks that, despite selling a gajillion copies, seem to have slipped between the cracks. get covered far more often by younger artists – the deep cuts as well as the hits.īut Brothers in Arms deserved to be in those albums’ company then and it deserves to remain there now. And in terms of covers, I can attest that songs from Born in the U.S.A. In one (admittedly imperfect) measurement of popularity among young people, Spotify streams, three separate songs from Appetite dwarf anything from Brothers in Arms. It feels like both albums loom far above Brothers in Arms in the current consciousness. and just ahead of Appetite for Destruction. On the ’80s album-sales charts, Brothers in Arms sits just behind Born in the U.S.A. They were massively, enormously, stadium-filling-pop-superstar famous. It feels like Dire Straits have been, not forgotten certainly, but not remembered at anywhere near the level of their success. I wonder if that might surprise some people.
![so far away from me dire straits album so far away from me dire straits album](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f2/88/db/f288db7342717c5a5aaf93700dd6aeda.jpg)
Brothers in Arms is the sixth-best-selling album of the entire 1980s.