50 Shades Of Shred: Sophie Lloyd: "Sultans Of Swing"

Sophie Lloyd is the British guitar powerhouse found on both YouTube (Sophie Lloyd Channel) and her personal web site sophieguitar.com, which offers guitar lessons (exclusive to her Patreon page), links to live streams, original songs and music videos, swag, and more.

After posting videos for the past ten years, Lloyd's YouTube channel has 1,080,000 subscribers. Her videos are focused primarily on Rock and Metal, as she has been influenced by the music of bands such as Iron Maiden, AC/DC and Pantera since she was a child.

This video is an instrumental shred version of the Mark Knopfler-penned Dire Straits classic "Sultans Of Swing", off the band's debut epynomous album. The "Dire Straits" album was released in 1978, and spent 132 weeks on the UK Albums Chart. Rolling Stone's Ken Tucker singled out "Sultans of Swing" for its "inescapable hook" and "Bob Dylan-like snarl in its vocal". "Dire Straits" was later certified double platinum in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

As is common on her live-in-the-studio videos, Lloyd's buttery shred is all over this arrangement, which features her (new at the time) signature Kiesel guitar, rocking distorted solo tones, legato licks, harmonized leads, and quick picking.