Phraseology and Culture in English

part, in the writings of other written media personalities. Do these people 
really believe that the whole world is more or less identical and adopts 
similar ways of thinking? Or is it the fear of international criticism that 
stops them from admitting that the weekend appeals to Australians more 
than it does to many other cultures in the world? In a review published in 
The Australian (29 May 2001), Iain Shedden, another music critic, explic-
itly refused to draw conclusions about Australian perceptions of the week-
end from the APRA decision: 
“Friday on My Mind” is the best Australian song of all time. A poll con-
ducted by the Australasian Performing Right Association says so. 
What that says about Australian culture is not particularly shocking or in-
sightful, since the song, which would make many people’s top 10 anywhere 
in the Western world, is about as quintessentially rock ‘n’ roll as you can 
get. We have all lived for the weekend, one way or another, at some time. 
It is certainly the case that the success of one song does not necessarily 
entitle anyone to come up with generalisations about the culture in which it 
was produced. It is quite possible that the message contained in the lyrics is 
universal, or else that no message at all is being communicated. But it is 

---

Australian perceptions of the weekend
93
also the case that the culturally specific message which possibly hides be-
hind a musical success story must not be ignored. If Shedden had looked 
beyond the APRA list, and if he had undertaken the research at the basis of 
this study, he might have preferred to be much less categorical. His conclu-
sion (“So how come ‘Friday on My Mind’ made it to the top, a song about 
living for the weekend? Because, in the end, it’s the quality of the song and 
not its Australianness that makes it a classic”) would undoubtedly have 
been different. What has turned “Friday on my mind” into an Australian 
rock classic, a true anthem to the Australian working class, is as much the
message in it as the quality of the product. 
The first verse deserves to be quoted in full: it shows how, as early as 
Monday mornings, Fridays are impatiently expected. 
Monday morning feels so bad, 
Ev’rybody seems to nag me. 
Coming Tuesday I feel better, 
Even my old man looks good. 
Wednesday just don’t go, 
Thursday goes too slow, 
I’ve got Friday on my mind. 
In the second verse, reference is made to the Monday-to-Friday routine 
(“the five day drag”). One day, that routine will no longer exist (a clear 
reference to the frustration of Australian youngsters in the sixties): 
Do the five day drag once more, 
Know of nothing else that bugs me 
More than working for the rich man, 
Hey, I’ll change that scene one day... 
The hit has been recorded over and over again, in Australia by rock group 
Noogie, and in the United States by David Bowie, Peter Frampton, Gary 
Moore, and rock group Dakota, among others. In the year 2000, before the 
APRA decision, the chorus line “Monday I have Friday on my mind” be-
came the title of an academic paper by two Australian authors (Barnes and 
Fieldes 2000), and on 22 November 2002 The Age newspaper printed an 
article with the same title by Sherrill Nixon reporting on some British re-
search. Barnes and Fieldes do not refer to either the song or the Easybeats, 
which is probably not a surprise, if we bear in mind that the journal which 
published their paper is itself Australian based, and that the song title is 
well known by the public at large. Nixon, on the other hand, does provide a 
reference: “The Easybeats knew it in 1967 but it’s taken 35 years to prove 

---

94
Bert Peeters
it. Mondays are a drag and workers don’t care much for Tuesdays, Wed-
nesdays or Thursdays either. But they love Fridays”.