Synopsis

Colin Hay plays a nervous man who wants nothing more than to be left alone in his apartment. As strangers and unsettling visitors gather outside, he peers through the door, hides behind furniture, and clings to his guitar amplifier like a trusted childhood companion. The band members appear throughout the apartment in deliberately odd, disconnected scenes before coming together for a performance. The video's comic paranoia mirrors the song's anxious lyrics while giving Men At Work a memorable early-MTV visual identity.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was released in 1982 to promote Men At Work's breakthrough single, which had originally been released in Australia on May 25, 1981.

• The song's premise came from Colin Hay's real-life experience living in a St Kilda apartment complex next to drug dealers. Visitors regularly mistook his apartment for theirs, leaving Hay uneasy whenever someone knocked.

• Hay wrote the music around 1979 while staying in a tree house he had built with his girlfriend in Bermagui, New South Wales. The lyrics were written later, after the apartment experiences that inspired the song.

• The Fender amplifier that Hay embraces in the video represents the song's "childhood friend," turning an inanimate piece of musical equipment into a source of comfort.

• The video combines a loose comic narrative with performance footage. The band members are shown playing in different parts of the house before appearing together on a soundstage.

• "Who Can It Be Now?" reached No. 2 in Australia and became Men At Work's first No. 1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 in October 1982.

• Its bright pop arrangement and prominent saxophone contrast with the song's underlying themes of isolation, anxiety, and fear of unwanted intrusion.