ZZ Top’s ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ as a Dire Straits Song

Dutch musician Laszlo Buring performed the iconic ZZ Top song “Sharp Dressed Man” in the unique style of Dire Straits. This oddly pleasing combination gave Mark Knopfler‘s guitar a nice Southern twang. Buring states that he was inspired to do this mashup from an interview with the band’s engineer Neil Dorfsman about the song “Money For Nothing” from the Brothers in Arms album.

A few days ago I was reading an article about the recording of the Brothers in Arms album and there was a quote in there by Neil Dorfsman, saying that Mark Knopfler was originally going for a ZZ Top sound when he was recording Money For Nothing. So that got me thinking, what would a ZZ Top song sound like in the style of Dire Straits, with the Money For Nothing guitar sound.

Buring also wrote a Dire Straits song with the help of ChatGPT.

A few weeks ago I polled what the subject would be for this project and most of the votes went to ‘nostalgia’. So I asked ChatGPT to write a song about nostalgia in the style of Dire Straits and this is the result.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.