![\"Dire](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Dire-Straits-The-Police-Split-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Klaus Hiltscher \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Sun 28 September 2025 14:15, UK <\/p>\n
There\u2019s no question that The Police and Dire Straits<\/a> are the two commercial contenders for the most successful UK act of the Second British Invasion.<\/p>\n Phil Collins beats them both by a country mile, selling well over 100 million solo records without considering his success steering Genesis post Peter Gabriel, but when weighing up the artists that vaguely orbited the British new wave, Sting and Mark Knopfler\u2019s former bands towered above the rest.<\/p>\n Both bands enjoyed considerable success in their home country. Dire Straits hit the ground running, debut single \u2018Sultans of Swing\u2019 shooting their eponymous first LP high up the album charts, and enjoying steady success across Europe. The Police\u2019s artful borrowing of punk\u2019s urgency but smattered with their love of dub bass and reggae flourish also proved a pop winner; likewise, their debut album Outlandos d\u2019Amour would be launched straight off by the canonical karaoke favourite \u2018Roxanne\u2019.<\/p>\n As the 1980s arrived, a rush of UK acts suddenly found themselves conquering the American charts. A pop domination unseen since Beatlemania\u2019s ensuing flurry of British rock groups, the broad new wave would dominate the Billboard charts for the rest of the decade, punks and synthpoppers finding themselves the day\u2019s poster groups for a new teen audience. Propelled by MTV<\/a>, The Clash became one of the biggest bands on the planet, and the likes of Duran Duran and Billy Idol already had that much-needed music video flair from the UK\u2019s healthy heritage of promo videos.<\/p>\n But, eclipsing all of them would be Dire Straits and The Police. As the term new wave began to ebb from parlance, the two continued to rise and rise. 1983\u2019s Synchronicity would see The Police top both the UK and UK albums chart, as did their defining \u2018Every Breath You Take\u2019 for the UK and US singles charts. The associated tour would see The Police to 70,000 at the famous Shea Stadium<\/a> in New York.<\/p>\n Dire Straits too entered a whole new stratum of commercial fortune. Dropped in 1985, Brothers in Arms was a gargantuan monster, its pioneering CGI video for \u2018Money for Nothing\u2019 a perennial feature on MTV and the first video to air on its European launch two years later. Dire Straits\u2019 fifth LP still stands as the biggest-selling British album of the decade.<\/p>\n So, who was more successful?<\/p>\n Discounting solo sales, Sting reaching Phil Collins levels of figures, but the winner is Dire Straits. While The Police enjoy over 42m certified sales, the band behind the awful \u2018Walk of Life\u2019 boast over 53m, climbing as high as 100m if including claimed sales.<\/p>\n They likely owe all their success to just how phenomenally popular Brothers in Arms really was, the first CD to ever sell over a million copies, and the first to be certified ten times platinum in the UK, as well as the eighth-best-selling album in UK chart history. No hard feelings were had, Sting offering guest vocals on the MTV guzzling \u2018Money For Nothing\u2019, as well as sharing songwriting credits on the Hot 100 mainstay.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Klaus Hiltscher \/ Alamy) Sun 28 September 2025 14:15, UK There\u2019s no question that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[44518,96,44519,128,660,26098,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-166595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-dire-straits","tag-entertainment","tag-mark-knopfler","tag-music","tag-sting","tag-the-police","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}