“Down Under” by Men At Work

"Down Under" had two lives. Men at Work first put it out themselves in 1980, slower and differently arranged, on the flip side of their first local single, "Keypunch Operator"; once Columbia signed them, they recut it for their debut album, Business as Usual, and issued it as its second single in 1981. Co-founders Colin Hay and Ron Strykert wrote it, Peter McIan produced, and it's a sly, loping mix of reggae bounce and new-wave pop, with Hay's wry vocal and Greg Ham's woodwind hook skipping over John Rees' bass and Jerry Speiser's drums.

It topped the charts at home, then in New Zealand, Canada, Britain and America, where it held number one for four nonconsecutive weeks and sold more than two million copies. In Australia it's practically a second national anthem, a fixture at sporting events.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.