I realize we’ve come to a point in music history where the melody of almost every song is derived from another song written years ago. Sometimes these issues can be quickly resolved, such as Mike Oldfield receiving a writer’s credit on Paul Hardcastle’s Vietnam-sampled dance track “19” because one of the melodies in the 1985 hit borrowed liberally from the melody of “Tubular Bells.” Or that the songwriters of Queen’s “Under Pressure” were able to grab a ton of cash from Vanilla Ice, because Ice built his biggest hit “Ice Ice Baby” over Queen’s intro for “Under Pressure.”
Well, here’s another one, and this one apparently took over 25 years to finally settle.
Remember Men at Work? Australian quintet, had a few hits in the 1980’s with songs like “Who Can It Be Now?”, “It’s A Mistake”, “Overkill”, “Dr. Heckyll and Mr. Jive,” and their biggest track ever, “Down Under.”
Great song, “Down Under.” I should mention that I did see Men At Work when they played at SPAC in the 1980’s (the Red Rockers opened for them), and I also saw Men at Work’s frontman Colin Hay about 8 years ago when he played a solo gig at the Van Dyck in Schenectady.
That being said, apparently “Down Under” has a few moments of melody of a song called “Kookaburra.” You might have heard it at one point, lyrics like “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, mighty mighty king of the bush is he…”
That children’s song, written in 1934 by a Melbourne music teacher, was later given to the Girl Guides (what we know in America as the Girl Scouts) as a sing-along campfire song.
Flash forward to 1983, and Men at Work have already had a major hit with the song “Who Can It Be Now?” and need a follow-up hit. Enter ‘Down Under,” a song filled with Australian slang and imagery. And it also contains a flute section that, if you hear it just right, sounds like the “Kookaburra” song.
First, here’s Men at Work’s classic hit:
And now, here’s an instrumental version of the song “Kookaburra,” along with lyrics.
And now there’s a court battle over whether there’s enough of the “Kookaburra” melody in “Down Under” to force Men At Work’s record company to pay the publisher that currently owns the rights to “Kookaburra” millions of dollars.
Any decision will have to be settled in court, with both sides haggling over semantics and whether “Down Under” has a small portion or a major identifiable portion of “Kookaburra” in it.
But I’ll say this – if the publishers that own the rights to “Kookaburra” are successful, the next target they should go after is 70’s disco artist Carl Douglas.
Carl Douglas? The guy who had the hit in 1974 with “Kung Fu Fighting”?
Yeps. Cause if you’re going to nab Men at Work for that “Kookaburra” flute riff, then you gotta check this video out – especially when the same “Kookaburra” riff kicks in at about 15 seconds into this video clip.
Discuss, y’all.
Chuck The Writer 
This is insane. No wonder it has taken so long to expose this, the theme of the so called original is completely inrecognizable in ‘Down Under’. If this settles in favour of the Kookaburra-owner the all over impact may be a serious damage to creativity in general. Inspiration comes from everywhere and most of it is stored subconciously. Who will dare in the future to consider anything at all ones completely own creation?
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The lag is recognizing the connection and filing the law suit may be a stumpling block to collecting back royalties, but I have no independent knowledge of Austrailain copyright law. I hope they lose the suit, just another set of lawyers trying to grab money they are not entitles to.
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There’s an entire genre of music, Hip Hop, devoted to “recycling” riffs, chords, lyrics etc. of other well established music. Vanilla Ice used Bowie and Queen. Led Zeppelin riped off all their hits from other artists.
This is why many laugh at copyright laws.
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I had to strain to “hear” the similarity! I think it is a great stretch. Perhaps a sizable donation from the record companies to the international girl scouts would be more appropriate – after all, if the song was given to them they are the rightful owner – not a record label. This would not only help scouting, but help put a stop to personal enrichment from such law suits.
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I think that this copyright issue should be let go, like people have said many songs are based on similar chords, this is just because of greed for money. Really this whole battle is unaustralian, they are both aussie classics and I think any Aussie thinks this is a ridiculous cause for a suing.
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Since this case has reached the stage where the dispute is essentially about the JUST financial amount of requite that Larrikin Music is entitled to, as the owners of the copyright in “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree”, from the earnings of the song “Down Under” worldwide, an accurate measurement of this JUST proportion from the earnings of “Down Under” worldwide, would need to be based on the proportion of the emotional feelings that the flute riffs segment (among all three segments of the said song) had aroused to generate the motivation that drove people worldwide to purchase a recording of the song.
By reason that the song “Down Under” is considered to have aroused the same Australian Spirit upon its release as the Boxing Kangaroo pennant on Australia II did after the 1983 America’s Cup, the questions we need to ask ourselves are : What segment of the song had caused the most arousal (and in what proportion) of the emotional feelings that motivated people worldwide to purchase a recording of the song “Down Under” ? Was it the flute riffs that had been copied from the original song, the lyrics written by the two men from “Men at Work” for the song “Down Under” or the balance of the musical arrangements also written by the two men from “Men at Work” ? Most people would agree that the number of notes of the flute riffs played in the second song (and in the same musical order of succession as was featured in the original song) would NOT be a very accurate method of measurement as far as financial requite is concerned – since people are neither motivated to buy a recording based on the length of a particular musical arrangement that is contained in any particular song nor the overall play-time of the entire recording.
It is evident that the sum total of all three segments (the flute riffs, the lyrics, as well as the balance of the musical arrangement) had collectively generated that motivation. The number of notes of the flute riffs or their duration within the entire recording of the song “Down Under” would therefore NOT QUALIFY as an inaccurate method of measurement, simply because – just like copyright is intangible – so are the emotional feelings aroused by a particular piece of music or song.
Another interesting factor that would definitely affect the JUST proportion of financial entitlement owing to each of the two parties, is the fact that the arousal of Australian patriotic emotional feelings generated by the song “Down Under” would be applicable ONLY to the number of recordings that had been sold in AUSTRALIA, because the arousal of Australian patriotic emotional feelings for the residents of the USA and of the UK – who had also purchased the recording – would be totally INAPPLICABLE.
Whatever this proportion is, when the judge slices the cake, the MERIT that needs to be attributed to “Men at Work” for selecting the flute riffs from this well known Australian song ‘to inject a more Australian flavour into their song’ would also need to be taken into consideration, because the writers/creators of “Down Under” could have selected something else from some other Australian song, the financial value of which could not have matched the amount of recompense claimed by Larrikin Music.
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