29 January 1983
I remember seeing the video for ‘Down Under’ when I was small and thinking that the bit where the guy drinks out of a flower vase while his mates chug beer was the most hilarious thing ever. The song’s chirpy flute and bouncy reggae beat probably reinforced my childhood belief that Men At Work were fun itself, an Australian Madness.
Time has not been kind to those impressions, especially now that I know what “chunder” means. Men At Work’s antics in the video are the forced japes and camera mugging of a group of adults required to turn out a pop promo as part of a hectic schedule. Flower-Vase-Drinking Guy is less consequential to the action than I had remembered. And ‘Down Under’ itself, though the flute and beat are still light and airy, now feels quite a trudge, mostly because Colin Hay’s vocals sound like someone doing a “reggae” accent or a Sting accent, whichever is worse.
And just to further kill the fun, a high-profile court case in the ’00s found that the flute part breached the copyright of an Australian children’s song. Bugger.
