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Men at Work - "Down Under"

Weirdly, I'd actually rather write about the second song that popped into my head this morning, but this 1982 pop classic beat that song out, and those are the rules I set for myself with this project.

So, to perhaps the best-known song by the Aussie fivesome -- and I call this an '82 single because that's when it hit in the U.S., where it took the band's landmark debut, "Business as Usual," a year to come out after success in its native land "Down Under."

Now, it feels like this song might well be the Australian national anthem, Aussies consider it quite a patriotic song, playing it regularly at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, especially when Aussies won medals. This, despite the song having references to marijuana in its opening lyrics, and over-imbibing to the point of illness later in one version of the chorus.

I think it still influences most Americans' ideas of what Aussies are like -- including the stereotype that Aussies are overly rowdy. If nothing else, it certainly brought vegemite into the American consciousness.

So some 30 years on, this song endures, in large part because of its hooky flute line. That hook was based on an Australian children's folk son called "Kookaburra." Unfortunately, it came out in 2009 that the folk song was not public domain, as had been believed, and while its writer, Marion Sinclair, had been dead since 1988, a music publishing company that owned the rights sued Men at Work for copyright infringement -- and won.

Frontman Colin Hay and guitarist Ron Strykert wrote the song in 1978 and were the credited songwriters, and Hay insists that the plagiarism was unintentional. Multi-instrumentalist Greg Ham added the riff a couple of years later in a jam session, and it stuck.

The court decision was unpopular, and the song remains beloved in Australia.

In his final years -- Ham died in April of this year -- he worried that he'd be remembered as nothing but a plagiarist. Thankfully, that hasn't proven true.

Hay re-recorded "Down Under" this year -- and pointedly changed the flute riff.

NEAR MISS: Only one other tune on the Mental Jukebox this morning. One can't hear Bill Clinton give a soaring, barn-burning speech without the theme song of his initial White House campaign, Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop," soaring to the fore. "It'll be, better than before, yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone ..."

Ironically, a tour supporting Fleetwood Mac is what helped break Men at Work to U.S. audiences in the first place.

#men at work #down under #colin hay #greg ham #ron strykert #kookaburra #marion sinclair #fleetwood mac #don't stop #bill clinton