Songoftheday 3/25/13 - Trying his best to unlock all the secrets but he's not sure what he's found...

Men At Work - "Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive"
from the album Cargo (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5

Today's Song of the Day is by the Australian rock group Men At Work, who had already scored two top-10 pop hits in America from their second album Cargo, "Overkill" (one of my favorite songs of the 80s), and the anti-war "It's A Mistake". They followed up with a song turning a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson on its head into a comic "love potion" ditty about a scientist who concocts something to make himself more attractive...

"Dr. Heckyll" became Men At Work's last pop top-40 appearance in the US, although they did come close a couple years later with "Everything I Need". The single also reached #12 on the rock radio chart, and overseas in their home country it was their fifth and final top-10 hit, and the fourth and final top-40 single in Britain.

In 1985, lead singer Colin Hay (who wrote this song) departed for a solo career, with a minor hit of his own in 1987 with "Hold Me". Hay and saxophonist Greg Ham reunited for a bit (including a stint at the Sydney Olympics) but nothing came from it but a big old lawsuit over plagiarism on their "Down Under" single. Sadly, despondency over that led Ham to commit suicide in 2012.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


...and here's the band in better times in 1983 performing "Overkill" then "Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive"..

Up tomorrow: Hugh Cregg and the boys. Sports, y'all.