Down Under (song)
| Down under | |
|---|---|
| Men at Work | |
| publication | November 1981 |
| Genre (s) | Pop rock . reggae |
| Author (s) | Colin Hay , Ron Strykert |
| album | Business as usual |
Down Under is a song by the Australian band Men at Work . The piece is kept in reggae rhythm and the text deals with Australian peculiarities.
The song is featured on the band's debut album, Business as Usual , released in October 1981, and was released as a second single in their home country the following month. In other countries such as Germany and Great Britain, the single was released in February 1982. The piece reached number one on the charts in numerous countries.
History of origin
The song was written by Colin Hay and Ron Strykert in Melbourne in May 1978 , when the band Men at Work didn't exist. It was not until 1979 that the group - whose name is derived from traffic signs in English-speaking countries ("road construction work") - at La Trobe University in Melbourne. Since 1979 the band with flautist Greg Ham played the song in its current form.
In October 1981 the American Peter McIan produced together with sound engineer Jim Barbour at Richmond Recorders in Sydney for CBS Records Australia Ltd. the first recordings with the band for their debut album Business as Usual , which was released in October 1981 in Australia and in March 1982 in the USA. The first single from this was Who Can It Be Now , which rose to number one in the USA after it was released on May 11, 1982.
Single release and success
Shortly thereafter, CBS decided to decouple the third track from the album, Down Under , also as a single and to release it in the US in October 1982. Down Under / Crazy (Columbia # 03303) entered the US singles charts on November 6, 1982 , when the previous single was still in the US top 10. The debut album with the strange lyrics by Hay went platinum six times and sold 15 million copies worldwide, including six million in the USA, and topped the charts with the single in the USA and Great Britain.
The single was number one for four weeks in the US, six weeks in Australia and three weeks in the UK, among other things. The song also reached the top of the charts in Canada, Ireland, Poland, New Zealand and Switzerland. The gold status for the single was awarded in 1983 by the American RIAA .
Down Under was played by the band during the closing event of the 2000 Summer Olympics . In May 2001, the Australasian Performing Rights Society named it Down Under in a list of the best Australian songs of all time . Down Under is now considered one of the unofficial Australian national anthems like Waltzing Matilda .
Recording and content
Down Under , which the Australians colloquially use to refer to their continent on the other side of the earth, was composed of Colin Hay (vocals / guitar), Ron Strykert (guitar / vocals), Jerry Speiser (drums / vocals), John Rees (bass ) and Greg Ham (saxophone, keyboards, vocals, flute, harmonica). The song, presented in ska and reggae rhythm, is recorded in B flat minor. A flute part consisting of four bars by multi-instrumentalist Greg Ham became part of the overall arrangement.
The song, which is often not immediately understandable even for the English-speaking world outside Australia, tells the story of an Australian who travels the world on the hippie trail . He reports from his homeland, where the beer flows in abundance, women are hot ("glow") and men tear them open ("plunder") and throw up in the second stanza because of excessive beer consumption ("chunder", colloquially for "puke") ", Actually" vomit "in English). The rest of the world took notice of the Australian Vegemite sandwich , a concentrated yeast extract used as a spread. Part of the text is Australian slang : The traveler drives in an overheated (“fried-out”) VW bus (“kombi”) and obviously smokes marijuana (“head full of zombie”). The title was initially intended as a B-side of Keypunch Operator .
Colin Hay said of “Songfacts”: “The chorus is really about the sell-off of Australia in many ways, about the country's overdevelopment. It's a song about the loss of hope and faith in this land. It is about the exploitation of the land by greedy people. It is ultimately about celebrating the country, but not in a nationalist way and not in a flag-waving way. It really is more than that. "
Plagiarism dispute
Only 28 years after publication were allegations of plagiarism raised by the music publisher Larrikin Music Publishing in May 2008 by way of a lawsuit against the composers for copyright infringement. Allegedly originated a part of the flute arrangements from Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree (The Laughing Hans sits in the old gum tree ), a book written by Marion Sinclair Australian scout song from 1934, has been applied for until 1975 copyright protection. The song, which is still well-known today, has borrowed a total of two bars from the chorus of the 92-bar original for Down Under . These two measures are part of the four-measure flute passage. The two measures taken over make up 5.8% of all measures from Down Under , which is to be qualified as insignificant. The other side objected that the nursery rhyme Kookaburra was written in major, while Down Under was written in minor. In addition, only two measures were criticized, which is irrelevant in terms of quantity and quality. This slight correspondence is not recognizable for the musical layman.
The Sydney lawsuit revealed that Larrikin purchased the original for A $ 6,100 in 1990 after the author Sinclair passed away in 1988. The composer did not notice the copyright infringement during her lifetime, even though she knew the world hit. The music publisher Larrikin now managed the rights for Norm Lurie, the managing director of the music publisher Larrikin, which belongs to the multinational Music Sales group. Lurie instructed the other side in the Melbourne newspaper The Age : "Check before you infringe the copyrights of others!" On February 4, 2010, the final judgment of the Australian Federal Court in Sydney was issued, according to which Down Under contained substantial parts of the original and therefore the defendants had to pay damages to the music publisher Larrikin in the amount to be determined for copyright infringement.
On July 6, 2010, the claim for damages was set at 5% of the royalties received since May 20, 2002 , which are to be paid to the music publisher Larrikin . The court made it clear that strictly speaking there was no copyright infringement, but a violation of the Trade Practices Act of 1974. The music publisher originally demanded 60% of all previous royalties, which the court rejected as excessive and unrealistic. From the damages amount of around 670,000 euros it can be deduced that the band's record company must have generated revenues of around 13.4 million euros with this song since 2002. Extrapolated to 28 years since its release, that would be around 35 million euros in revenue with just one song - a "real world hit".
Web links
- Christina Klahr: Down Under . In: Song Lexicon . Retrieved October 27, 2014.
- Discography
Individual evidence
- ↑ release date "Down Under"
- ↑ release date UK
- ↑ release date "Who Can It Be Now"
- ↑ the B-side varies depending on the country
- ^ Fred Bronson, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits , 1985, p. 566
- ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 504
- ↑ Oxford Dictionary of Current English , 1988, p. 261
- ↑ Down Under by Men at Work . Song facts. Retrieved February 11, 2010.
- ↑ in other states this would not have been sufficient for allegations of plagiarism
- ↑ RadioRNR, February 9, 2010: Men At Work's Colin Hay hits out over plagiarism ruling ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ BBC News, February 4, 2010, Men At Work Loose Plagiarism Case in Sydney
- ↑ FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA, Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Ltd v EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited (No 2), 2010, FCA 698, File Number: NSD 145/2008 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was created automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ including the share of the proceeds from LP sales down under
- ↑ Matthias Kugler, SWR3 of July 6, 2010, 6:21 p.m.
