“Down Under” is a song recorded by Australian rock band Men at Work. It was originally self-released in 1980 as the B-side to their first local single, “Keypunch Operator”, before the band signed a recording contract with Columbia Records. Both early songs were written by the group’s co-founders, Colin Hay and Ron Strykert. The early version of “Down Under” has a slightly slower tempo and different arrangement from the later Columbia release. The best-known version was then released on Columbia in 1981 as the second single from Men at Work’s debut studio album, Business as Usual.
The hit song went to number one in their home country Australia in December 1981, and then topped the New Zealand charts in February 1982. The song topped the Canadian charts in October 1982. In the United States, the song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on 6 November 1982 at No. 79, and reached No. 1 in January 1983. Topping the US Billboard chart for four non-consecutive weeks, it eventually sold over two million copies in the US alone. Billboard ranked it at No. 4 for 1983. In the UK, the song topped the charts in January and February 1983: the only Men at Work song to make the UK top 20. The song also went to No. 1 in Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland, and was a top 10 hit in many other countries.
“Down Under” is perceived as a patriotic song in Australia, often jokingly citing the song as “the real Australian National Anthem”; it remains popular and is often played at sporting events. In January 2018, as part of Triple M’s “Ozzest 100”, the ‘most Australian’ songs of all time so far, “Down Under” was ranked number 2 behind Cold Chisel’s “Khe Sanh”
The lyrics to “Down Under” depict an Australian man travelling the globe (specifically mentioning Brussels and Bombay, as well as the hippie trail), meeting people who are interested in his home country. The story is based in part on singer Colin Hay’s own travels abroad, including a prominent reference to a Vegemite sandwich, which derived from an encounter with a tall baker from Brussels who emigrated from Brunswick, Melbourne (Vegemite was not actually available in Belgium at the time the song was written). Hay has said the lyric was partly inspired by Barry Humphries’ character Barry McKenzie, a comically stereotypical Australian who tours abroad.
Slang and drug terms are featured in the lyrics. It opens with the singer “travelling in a fried-out Kombi, on a hippie trail, head full of zombie”. In Australian slang, “fried-out” at that time meant that it is in really poor condition and overheating (as in a short circuit rather than drunk/high), “Kombi” is short for “Kombinationskraftwagen” and refers to the Volkswagen Type 2, and “full of zombie” refers to the use of a type of marijuana. “Hippie trail” refers to a subcultural tourist route popular in the 1960s and 1970s 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 lyric, 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 music video comically plays out the events of the lyric, showing Hay and other band members riding in a Volkswagen Kombi 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. Exterior shots 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 Americanisation. 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”
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