Why Worry

Album: Brothers In Arms (1985)
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by Mark Knopfler, this song finds him comforting a loved one in rather poetic terms:

    But baby, just when this world seems mean and cold
    Our love comes shining red and gold
    And all the rest is by the way


    It's almost a lullaby, as he turns the cold, cruel world into a place of tranquility.
  • This runs 8:31, with the last four minutes instrumental. When Mark Knopfler spoke with the BBC in 1989, he had second thoughts about this section. "The playout of 'Why Worry' seems to be a very pointless thing to me now, all that faffing around with pretty sounds," he said.
  • The Everly Brothers released this on their 1985 album Born Yesterday; Jennifer Warnes included it on her 2018 album Another Time, Another Place. She told Songfacts: "Mark Knopfler understands the Everly Brothers and Ricky Nelson and all the American music, maybe more than a lot of Americans know it. He wrote this lovely, gentle song that the Everlys did, and I loved it. It's musical, it's intimate, it's loving."

Comments: 1

  • Kreuzer from IndyI’ve always loved this song. I knew it from the Dire Straits album but I also found it on a cassette years later for baby lullabies. I would play it for my daughter when she was a baby. She’s now 26. The Everly’s did an excellent job singing it, too, with their melodic voices!
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