'Down Under' made Men at Work the biggest band on the planet in the early 1980s. The band split soon after, but 'Down Under' never stopped working. It became an unofficial national anthem, and was as unstoppable as the fried - out Kombi of its opening line. Decades later, ABC's Spicks and Specks innocently revealed a similarity between the song's flute riff and an old nursery rhyme about a laughing Kookaburra. It sparked an epic legal stoush that shook the music world and will forever be associated with tragedy.