#ThrowbackThursday Today we go back to 1983 when Men at Work started a 4-week run at Nº1 on the US charts with the whacky, quirky, wonderful track Down Under (also known as “Land Down Under”), Australia’s unofficial theme song. The hit also scored a Nº1 position in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark & Switzerland and reached the top 10 in many other countries, selling 2 million copies in the US alone.
The song was written by the group’s co-founders, Colin Hay and Ron Strykert. Colin Hay told Songfacts: “The chorus is really about the selling of Australia in many ways, the overdevelopment of the country. It was a song about the loss of spirit in that country. It’s really about the plundering of the country by greedy people. It is ultimately about celebrating the country, but not in a nationalistic way and not in a flag-waving sense. It’s really more than that.”
The flute part in the song was based around the tune of “Kookaburra”, a well-known Australian children’s rhyme. Filmed in part at the Cronulla sand dunes outside of Sydney, the insane video was a huge hit on MTV. The guy who stands up and offers the Vegemite sandwich is the band’s drummer, Jerry Speiser. He wasn’t really “6 foot 4 and full of muscles,” he had to stand on something to get extra height – he also wore a wig.
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