Agreed

Crazy 8s Drums Not wrong there. Great band for sure.

you wanna hear it at the cricket.

Crazy 8s Drums Cold Chisel is Australia’s greatest band.

Down by the sea, my god

OG TRIPLE TRIPLE when I went to Darwin,Australia while I was in the Navy in 04 they played this song so much on our ship it might as well have been the national anthem.

Yeah naaah

i remember when this was released in uk charts when i was about 14 a brilliant crazy classic. the fantastic 80's amazing years

OG TRIPLE TRIPLE Agreed. The current anthem is shit

+melciveng At least we don't have to sing God save the queen anymore.

I was 7 in 2000, I wish I could travel now. but I think I first heard this on the radio as a kid and my mom liked it. I remember downloading the album on a torrent and played the album to death. I remember my dad pretended not to like the song but I think it was just because he heard it so many times.

Yeah. Also it's not like the lyrics have anything implicit or explicit that you could draw that conclusion of the death of Australia. Only in the video you could draw those conclusions.

Great! “Business as Usual”

And who cares really ...I'm glad you can't tell I really hate it "artists* stick their political agenda into music and movies ....

@@williamwilkinson381 that’s what music has been about for the longest time. Artists talking about real world issues and situations into music poetry. Don’t be such a ignorant snob.

That’s exactly what I thought it was about too! Always struck me as a travellers song.

@@TheMorningtrain The "plundering" continues as middle class Australians (and other 1st worlders) go abroad, spend their money, and undermine the land and cultures of the 3rd world.

Don't forget Ron Strykert

Australia anytime, God dammit I WANNA GO BAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKK

Me too

Just gimme the 80s.. I'll travel the rest.

@@vannjunkin8041 This brings back such happy memories . I realize I have kinda died inside. SO SAD

@@mikemurphree1348 keep listening to the 80s and rekindle the flame.. All I listen to

Bo Hunter yeah and are schools are safe believe it or not

Right up to and including 1989 from what I saw.

hi

:)

Asome song

Dick Tater: ~ In the U.S., the song "Who Can It Be Now" was a "hit" a few months before "Down Under" - , and the band preformed both of those tunes when they made an Oct. 23, 1982, appearance on the highly-popular TV-series _Saturday_ _Night_ _Live_ . The songs "Overkill" and "It's a Mistake" were two other "hits" by Men At Work that I recall from 1983. According to the Wikipedia "discography" for that band, there were also the songs "Be Good Johnny" and "Everything I Need" that broke into the U.S. Top 40 charts, but I personally don't recall those.

charliebe28 - I have been a musician for a long time, and I liked Men At Work's album right away...I still answer the door sometimes, singing "Who can it be, now?"

Yeah, Charlie beat me to it. In the U.S. we also heard "Who can it be now" and that was pretty much it, hit wise.

Well Kevin Bacon refers to Men at Work in Footloose so at least one person knows more than just this song lol Ofcourse the irony about doing these sort of songs is the band usually intends it to be some sort of social commentary on how society is fucked up but then society takes it and starts using it as an anthem unironically.

Equal paring Id say. Ive listened to Business as Usual it's okay but it isn't that memorable. @Joe Blow

leokimvideo sorry pretty sure u are wrong. Their is only so many notes in a saxophone. RIP Greg

This interview was recorded at least a year before that story broke.

What story?

That was the way they were made in the 80s.

One story I heard before. When the band was going to pitch themselves to the record company. They dressed up like painters or workers. And brought in a big ladder into the board room. Because nobody had heard of the group ‘men at work’ before

And that's ok

Yeah, now you make a documentary/reflection about a song..

.. #transvestigate

Who gives a fuck? You watched it until the end and liked it like the rest of us!!!

It was massive!

Colin Hay emigrated from Scotland when he was quite young. I wonder if he has spent time there recently?

Because a lot of Aussie bands had Scottish roots, ACDC was another.

I noticed that too. I was thinking Colin & Bon Scott had VERY similar speaking voices.

There were just a lot of immigrants to Australia from Britain in the 1950's it was a scheme known as the "ten pound poms" a generation of British people who came to Australia paying only ten pounds for the privilege, this scheme was supposedly part of a white Australia policy because after WW2 white Aussies felt scared about Asians starting to settle here so as a result of all this Colin and Bon Scott and lots of others are the kids of those immigrants, Jimmy Barnes is another Scott but you probably don't know him if youre not Australian. @@cmkimciago9602

That threw me too. Doesn't sound like he's lost much of his accent at all.

Who's 'just' a Jew? Springsteen? You're a dork.

J Gunn Springsteen is not Jewish, has Dutch, Irish and Italian background and was raised a Catholic. Doesn't sound particularly Jewish, you stupid fuck.

Yes, people think Born In The USA is an anthem when the song is actually a wry and somewhat caustic commentary on the hypocrisy of patriotism. The tune recognizes the plight of unfortunate foreign peoples suffering in a questionable war; while paying tribute to Vietnam veterans who served their country, some of whom were Springsteen's friends and some of whom did not return from the conflict.

@@scorpiorising3741 I love its message. You have to have the balls to construct a song to attack such issues of the government as well as much of society ignoring the purge of strangers suffering in a strange land and likely to not return, all for a sardonic remark against patriotism. Not being able to maintain a home or appropriate healthcare that you have been promised before, in the throes of the Reagan era, the second most corrupt administration in recent memory. Reagan used the song in his re-election campaign and Bruce got angry for him completely misconstruing the song's subject and turning it into a ra-ra patriotic anthem. It's like your warden ripping up and burning your diary in front of everyone.

correct and insightful. shame.

3:48 Here's a bit about it. The rest is on Wikipedia. The lyrics to Down Under depict an Australian man travelling the globe, who meets a number of people who are interested in his home country. The story is based in part on singer Colin Hay's own experiences, including a prominent reference to a Vegemite sandwich (a popular snack in Australia), which derived from an encounter, during Hay's travels abroad, with a baker who emigrated from Brunswick, Melbourne.[7] Hay has also said that the lyrics were partly inspired by Barry Humphries' character Barry McKenzie, a comically stereotypical Australian who tours abroad.[9] Slang and drug terms are featured in the lyrics. They open with the singer travelling in a fried-out Kombi, on a hippie trail, head full of zombie. In Australian slang "fried-out" means overheated, Kombi refers to the Volkswagen Type 2 combination van, and having "a head full of zombie" refers to the use of a type of marijuana. Hippie trail refers to a subcultural tourist route popular in 1960s and 70s which stretched from Western Europe to South-East Asia. The song also contains the refrain, where beer does flow and men chunder. To "chunder" means to vomit. Speaking to Songfacts about the overall meaning of the lyrics, Hay remarked: "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 promotional video comically plays out the events of the lyrics, showing Hay and other members of the band riding in a VW van, eating muesli with a 'strange lady', eating and drinking in a café, and lying in an opium den. The band are moved along at one point by a man in a shirt and tie who places a 'Sold' sign in the ground. The exterior shots for the music video were filmed at the Cronulla sand dunes in Sydney. The band are seen carrying a coffin across the dunes at the end. This, Hay has explained, was a warning to his fellow Australians that their country's identity was dying as a result of overdevelopment and Americanization. Hay has also stated that the same ominous sentiment lies behind the choral line, Can't you hear that thunder? You'd better run; you'd better take cover.

True

Ken Shields Their videos normally do give more background about how the song came to be. Strange that this didn't

the ending did.. a bunch of people dressed in white leading around a bunch of people dressed in black being whipped and made to carry a large object like slaves.

Peaks & Valleys is a great album too

Great story... Thanks.

They really were great'

Except those who were there