Industrial Disease

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“Industrial Disease”
Single by Dire Straits
from the album Love over Gold
Released 1985
Genre Rock
Length 05:48
Label Vertigo
Writer(s) Mark Knopfler
Love over Gold track listing
"Private Investigations"
(2)
"Industrial Disease"
(3)
"Love Over Gold"
(4)

"Industrial Disease" is a song by the British rock band Dire Straits and written by Mark Knopfler. It appeared on their 1982 album Love over Gold.

The song was released as a single in the U.S and as a rare B-side to Private Investigations on cassette tape in the United Kingdom.

[edit] Meaning

The song takes a look at decline of the British manufacturing industry in the early 1980s, focusing on strikes, depression and dysfunctionality. For example, the absurdity of media-driven maladies is laid out in a segment of the song describing the narrator's visit to a doctor's office for treatment of his "Industrial Disease".

The reference to "Brewer's Droop" as a medical condition is an in-joke, referring both to the effect of alcohol on libido and to the band of the same name that Mark Knopfler played in prior to Dire Straits.