On this day in music history:January 21,1983. Down Under (also known as Land Down Under) is a platinum-certified single recorded by Australian new wave rock group Men at Work. It was originally released in 1980 as the B-side to their first local single titled Keypunch Operator, released before the band signed with Columbia Records. Both early songs were written by the groups co-founders, Colin Hay and Ron Strykert. The early version of Down Under has a slightly different tempo and arrangement than the later Columbia release. The most well known version was then released on Columbia in October 1981 as the third single from their debut album Business as Usual (1981). The song went to number one in their home country of Australia in December 1981, and then topped the New Zealand charts in February 1982. Released in North America in mid-1982, the song topped the Canadian charts in October. 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 where it spent four non-consecutive weeks. It eventually sold over two million copies in the US alone. Billboard ranked it at the No. 4 song for 1983. In the UK, the song topped the charts in January and February 1983, and is the only Men at Work song to make the UK top 20. The song also went No. 1 in Ireland, Denmark and Switzerland, and was a top 10 hit in many other territories. It has become a popular and patriotic song in Australia. Heres a video. https://youtube/watch?v=XfR9iY5y94s
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 01:32:09 +0000
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