Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Brothers in Arms is the sixth-best-selling album of the entire 1980s. I wonder if that might surprise some people. It feels like Dire Straits have been, not forgotten certainly, but not remembered at anywhere near the level of their success. They weren’t just famous. They were massively, enormously, stadium-filling-pop-superstar famous.

On the ’80s album-sales charts, Brothers in Arms sits just behind Born in the U.S.A. and just ahead of Appetite for Destruction. It feels like both albums loom far above Brothers in Arms in the current consciousness. In one (admittedly imperfect) measurement of popularity among young people, Spotify streams, three separate songs from Appetite dwarf anything from Brothers in Arms. And in terms of covers, I can attest that songs from Born in the U.S.A. get covered far more often by younger artists – the deep cuts as well as the hits.

But Brothers in Arms deserved to be in those albums’ company then and it deserves to remain there now. 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. Enjoy. Continue reading »