The 1981 Pop Rock Hit That Resulted in a Lawsuit Over a Children’s Song Nearly 30 Years After It Was Released

In the early 1980s, Men At Work put their native Australia on the map with their hit single, “Down Under”. With references to Vegemite sangers and Volkswagen Kombis, the new wave track quickly became a point of pride for the people “living in a land down under.” Men At Work even included a musical quotation from a famous Australian nursery rhyme, “Kookaburra”.

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Despite its hyper-specificity to Aussies, “Down Under” became an international hit. The track topped the charts in the U.S., U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere. It became a mainstay at Australian sporting events and an unofficial national anthem for the “land of plenty.”

Simply put, the song was a tremendous career high for Men At Work. And that’s likely where they thought the song’s legacy would stay: a chart-topping hit about their home country. But in 2007, the rock band learned the hard way that copyright infringement lawsuits can sneak up at any time.

A 2007 Game Show Spurred a Court Case Over “Down Under”

“Down Under” is hardly Men At Work’s only hit (other notable tracks include “Who Can It Be Now?” and “Be Good Johny”). But this particular song became synonymous with the band’s sound. However, that ubiquity backfired in the late 2000s, when a quiz show called Spicks and Specks included a question about an Australian nursery rhyme used in a riff of a popular song. The answer was “Kookaburra” and “Down Under”.

The original songwriter of the nursery rhyme “Kookaburra”, Marion Sinclair, had been dead for nearly two decades by this point. But the copyrights had been transferred to Larrikin Music, which was notified of the “Kookaburra” reference on Spicks and Specks after the show aired in 2007. Two years later, Larrikin launched a lawsuit against Men at Work for copyright infringement. Larrikin ultimately won the legal battle. And although Men at Work tried to appeal the court’s decision, these attempts were denied.

The Federal Court of Australia ordered Men at Work to pay Larrikin Music around five percent of backdated royalties through the early 2000s. The decision was controversial at the time, with many arguing that Larrikin’s lawsuit was overkill and unnecessary.

As musician Martin Armiger asked The Sydney Morning Herald in 2009, “What purpose is served by insisting on the rights of a dead composer against quotation, one who in her lifetime wasn’t at all protective of her copyrights, who gave her intellectual assets away for no charge and showed no inclination to profit materially from her inventions?”

In any case, the “Down Under” debacle was an unsavory reminder that copyright infringement is no child’s play.

Photo by Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images