Our lives at 45 rpm

Tenth in a series on one Dullard's collection of 45s. Read the previous post here. (Yeah, it's been awhile.)

Song: "Who Can It Be Now?"
Artist: Men at Work
Year released: 1981
Highest U.S. chart position: 1
Video available? Yes.

For most people, "Down Under" is the iconic Men at Work song. It may be the band's most memorable track, but it's also an overplayed novelty number, its influence in 1980s music overstated.

The real Men at Work is in this song, their first U.S. single. Like the Australian band that recorded it, "Who" is quirky and off-kilter, the music simple and catchy.

The track is a paean to paranoia that is made all the creepier by the flat delivery of songwriter and singer Colin Hay, who may or may not be role-playing an extreme shut-in. He is the ultimate isolationist, so cloistered that he refuses to leave his lair and dreads the idea of anyone else even approaching him:

All I wish is to be alone
Stay away; don't you invade my home.

At the same time, Hay indicates that these unwanted visitors could also turn his home into a prison. Therefore, his own silence is necessary, thus furthering his isolation:

If he hears, he'll knock all day
I'll be trapped, and here I'll have to stay.

The narrator of "Who Can It Be Now" also hints that he is aware that his aversion to "guests" is exaggerated. His fears may be rooted in the idea that if he reveals his presence, he will be sent somewhere that, oddly enough, may or may not be more unpleasant than his own home.

Is that the man come to take me away?
Why do they follow me?
It's not the future that I can see
It's just my fantasy.

Hay's weird vision is expressed over Police-lite pop, with scratchy guitar and knock-knock drumming. Greg Ham's sax playing fleshes out the sound with a sense of urgency that befits the lyrics. Put together, it gels into one of the better three minutes of early '80s music.