Men at Work lead singer Colin Hay wrote this song with the band's keyboard player Greg Ham. In our interview with Hay, he said: "It was a song written from the standpoint of a 9-year-old boy. His parents are constantly telling him to be good and he feels like he understands some things but is completely misunderstood by the adult world, which I think a lot of people feel."
This was one of the first releases from Men at Work. A #8 hit in their native Australia, it showed up as a promotional single in America in 1981, but there wasn't much to promote, since the Business As Usual album didn't appear until 1982. "Who Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under" became huge hits, but "Be Good Johnny" wasn't released as a commercial single, so it didn't chart.
Like most Men at Work videos, "Be Good Johnny" was done on the cheap and kept quirky. This one follows Johnny on a series of adventures as he causes mischief to varying degrees. It did well on MTV, even though American audiences were a little baffled by the type of football Johnny's father asks him to play.
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