Muff Winwood's (Steve Winwood's brother) production is sparse but effective. The vocal and rhythm guitars have just a touch of reverb to give them some space but the lead guitar has a a lot of a slightly delayed verb that pushes it back in the mix, giving all the elements a nice front-to-back image. The drums are dry and in your face without being too compressed, and the snare is very snappy (sounds like a lot of under-snare mic).
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Everything sounds completely real and unprocessed. In 1979 analog recording might have been at it's peak and this recording certainly is a testament to that notion.
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It's a rock band playing at its simplest and best. There's nothing fancy about the arrangement at all. Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Solo, 1/2 Verse, Chorus, Solo It fits almost perfectly in what you might call the "textbook" song form, which looks like this: "Sultans Of Swing" is about as straight ahead a song arrangement as you'll ever find. Like all song analysis, we'll look at the song form, the arrangement, the sound, and the production. The song is from the album Dire Straits, which was made for only about $20,000, mere chump change in the big budget days of 1978. I figure that if they think so highly of the song, it's worth a song analysis.
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While I was expecting to hear something more from their generation, the song that played was actually " Sultans Of Swing ," the song that launched Dire Straits to international stardom. Much to my surprise, one of them whipped out his iPhone and dialed up a song and announced, "This is the greatest song ever recorded." As it played, nearly all of his friends agreed, much to my surprise. I was at a party at a swanky Beverly Hills establishment a few weeks ago when I got to talking to a group of Gen Xer's about music.