| Crowded House – Instinct Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| Someone once told me that this song is about sitting around smoking a joint, passing it around and getting stoned on the good old Kiwi one-toke. | |
| Men at Work – Down Under Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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I think this is the coolest song to come out of Aussie. (And I'm a Kiwi!) So many Aussies and Kiwis travel around the world and this is their anthem. I have been traveling for years and I can identify with every word in this song - it always makes me smile to hear it. Put on a backpack and travel around Europe or Asia and you will understand exactly what this song means. The "fried out Combi" is a reference to the yearly procession of VW Combis full of Kiwis and Aussies around Europe starting at London-Pamplona-Greece-Munich. The Combi is getting old now and every year fewer of them seem to make it as far as the Oktoberfest. The "strange lady who made me nervous" is a metaphor for the way people help out travellers in time of need. The man in Brussels "do you speak-a my language" is a reference to the way you find your fellow countrymen in the strangest places when you least expect it. |
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| Crowded House – Don't Dream It's Over Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| Fantastic Hammond organ solo in the middle of the song. | |
| Crowded House – Weather With You Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| The Finns had a sister who lived in Mount Pleasant Street in Te Awamutu (it wasn't number 57, but that sounded better so they used that). | |
| Split Enz – Six Months In A Leaky Boat Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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This is a song that every Kiwi knows. I think is mostly metaphoric talking about the love of the sea and travelling and the need to put our differences behind us. There are a few lines which are taken quite literally though "Aotearoa, rugged individual, Glisten like a pearl, At the bottom of the world" is a direct reference to New Zealand (known as Aotearoa in Maori). |
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| Dire Straits – Single-Handed Sailor Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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I listened to this song many times years ago without understanding the meaning. Then I moved to London and visited Greenwich with the reference to the Cutty Sark in this song in the back of my mind. Listening to the song and reading the lyrics I later realised that it all makes sense now. If you are ever in London, visit Greenwich, take a copy of the lyrics to this song and see how many references you can find. This is my interpretation: The "dry-dock town" is Greenwich in London and the river is the Thames. The "Little gypsy moth" is Sir Francis Chichester's Gipsy Moth IV in which he circumnavigated the globe single handedly. The boat is quite small and is overshadowed by the impressive "Cutty Sark" tea clipper which is also in dry dock nearby. At the time Knopfler wrote this song, the Gipsy Moth IV was in a dry dock at Greenwich "she’s all tied down", "a sailing ship just held down in chains" and slowly rotting away in quite a poor state "lying there in silent pain" after years of neglect and walked on by millions of tourist feet "He lean on the tourist trail". I am not sure who the "mother and her baby" are but the "college of war" is the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. The second half of the song seems to have darker overtones. Chichester hated the boat ("hey man, what do you call this thing") and said 'Gipsy Moth IV has no sentimental value for me at all' ("he could have said 'pride of London'") and sold it for 1 pound and a gin and tonic. In June 2005 the Gipsy Moth IV was relaunched after a full restoration and is now sailing around the world again, this time crewed by a group of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Sailing away in the dark. |
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