It's hardly suprising that Australians aren't proud of Australian-born rapper Iggy Azalea, since her cultural appropriation of Southern black culture makes her decidedly un-Australian in a way that Sia, Vance Joy or Kylie Minogue's decisions to sing without maintaining any noticeable features of their Australian accents does not. Toning down regional or national accents apparently helps musicians break into the US-dominated mainstream music industry (especially in the pop genre); it's hard to imagine Adele gaining the same global success if she had chosen to sung with a thick Cockney accent.
The most 'Australian' song to gain global recognition would undoubtedly be Men At Work's "Down Under", which soared to No. 1 in Australia in December 1981, topped the UK, Canada, Ireland, Denmark and New Zealand charts the following year, before going on to (finally) hit No.1 in the US in January 1983. The song's success lead Men At Work's debut album Business as Usual (1981) to sell 15 million copies worldwide, and spent 15 weeks at No. 1 in the US. They won the Best New Artist category at the 1983 Grammys, and were inducted into Hall of Fame at the 1994 ARIA Music Awards of 1994.
Vocalist Colin Hay's Australian accent isn't particularly prominent with his singing voice, but the track serves up regional distinctiveness via other means. The opening verses uses two (rhymed) regionally specific words:
'Traveling in a fried-out combieOn a hippie trail, head full of zombieI met a strange lady, she made me nervous.She took me in and gave me breakfast.And she said'
Lyrics + glossary: Immortal Muse
There's also a reference to Australia's national food (vegemite) and the verb 'chunder', which rhymes with the end rhymes of the song's impossibly catchy chorus:
'Do you come from a land down under?Where women glow and men plunder?Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?You better run, you better take cover'
And then there's the flute riff that was borrowed from the iconic children’s song Kookaburra (which resulted in a bitter copyright lawsuit last year). And yet, the song's ability to secure national and international renown by articulating a cautionary message (instead of blatant patriotism or nationalism) seems rare, unprecedented and memorable:
“The choruses were really about the death of the spirit of this place, my fear of the over-corporatisation of this country, which I think has happened and will continue to happen and is inevitable, perhaps." (Colin Hay, TheAustralian.com.au)
