When you think of “Down Under,” the famous song by the Aussie 80s band Men At Work, there’s no way that you can’t think of that telltale flute riff. Here’s the tricky part, though. According to lawyers in Australia, that riff is a plagarism of the song sung by Girl Guides everywhere, “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.” The song about that native bird of Australia was written by Marion Sinclair over 70 years ago, who was a teacher who wrote it for a Girl Guides competition. But, it turns out that the music publishing company Larrikin Music has own the copyright to the song since Sinclair passed away in 1988 and they finally filed for a copyright lawsuit in the last year.
Now, if you didn’t know the tune of both songs really well, you probably wouldn’t even realize that it had similarities. And as far as similarities go, I have to say that the Vanilla Ice sample of “Under Pressure”‘s guitar riff seemed like a more blatant rip-off than the flute from Kookaburra. But, the Federal Court Justice Peter Jacobson says differently and has determined that the flute is taking a significant amount of the original music and replicated it for “Down Under.”
Earlier, the justice had already given both of the parties the orders to start looking into what kind of compensation Larrikin should receive from the record companies for Men at Work, EMI Songs Australia and BMG Music Entertainment, as well as Ron Strykert and Colin Hay, the songwriters of the band. And we’re talking MILLIONS here, as the settlement could end up giving up to 60 percent of all of “Down Under”‘s royalties since it was released back in 1983.
As for Men At Work? Well, Colin Hay has gone on record saying that he realized he was borrowing from the tune but thought that it was as generic and public domain as Ring Around the Rosy. Talk about an expensive blunder.