Songoftheday 9/24/12 - Traveling in a fried-out Kombi, on a hippie trail head full of zombie...

Men At Work - "Down Under"
from the album Business As Usual (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (four weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 19

Today's Song of the Day is the Australian rock group Men At Work's ode to their homeland, "Down Under". The band's debut single, "Who Can It Be Now", became their first #1 hit back in the fall of 1982, and their followup proved to be even bigger. Written by singer Colin Hay and guitarist Peter Strykert, the sly local inferences (chunder means "puke"), and the first and only positive reference to vegemite, which I've tried and tasted quite faithfully like seaweed stuck to your sandal for a week, defined the band as much as it celebrated its country...

"Down Under" topped the American pop and rock charts in 1983, as well as made the top-20 on the adult-contemporary (soft-rock) radio chart. It also charted as a double A-side 12" single on the dance chart and peaked at #33. And most curiously, "Down Under" was the band's only #1 hit in Australia, as it did in the UK, Canada, and New Zealand.

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Twenty-five years after the song hit #1, Hay and Strykert were sued for incorporating the children's nursery rhyme "Kookaburra" into the flute solo on the song. The court ruled in favor of the copyright holders of the kids tune, and subsequent depression by Greg Ham, the bandmember who played the riff inadvertently, pushed him to commit suicide in April of 2012.

In 1999, metal group Pennywise covered the song for their Straight Ahead album..

Two years later, Polish rap group Beat Squad sampled the record for "Zabawa" ("Fun")...

and finally, here's Colin Hay performing it live in 2007..

Up Tomorrow: a Cougar needs some PDA.