Phraseology and Culture in English

5. “Friday on my mind” 
Talking about what he refers to as the “hallowed convention of the long 
weekend” (see above), Conway (1978: 187) claims that, “needless to say, 
such weekends tend to become longer by virtue of the time wasted both 
anticipating them and recovering from them”. Language and cultural con-
text both confirm that this hardly veiled criticism of certain instances of 
typical cultural behaviour, not of all Australians but of a sizeable propor-
tion among them, is largely founded. Sections 5, 6 and 7 present cultural 
and linguistic evidence that people tend to look forward not only to long 
weekends, but to all weekends; Sections 8 and 9 deal with linguistic mani-
festations of the weekend blues. It must be stressed again that what matters 
above all is the big picture. Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, one 
does find evidence of the sort we are about to explore – but only in Austra-
lia is that evidence so clustered and so clear. 
The end of the working week has spoken to the imagination of song 
writers, musicians and audiences throughout the English-speaking world. 
However, there is nothing more Australian than the 1966 hit song “Friday 
on my mind” (dubbed “Australia’s second national anthem” in an anony-
mous piece called “Setting the record straight”, The Age, 8 April 2003), if 
only because on 28 May 2001, in Sydney, an APRA (Australian Perform-
ing Rights Association) jury consisting of about a hundred authors, musi-
cians, music critics and distributors voted “Friday on my mind”, by the 
Easybeats, the best Australian rock song ever. In the 1960s, the Easybeats
were the most important Australian rock group, and the first to achieve 
international success (see McFarlane 1999 for details). “Friday on my 
mind” was to occupy for several weeks the top spot in the Australian hit 
parade and soon became part of Australian cultural heritage, the final con-
secration being APRA’s decision referred to a moment ago. 
For Bernard Zuel (Sydney Morning Herald, 29 May 2001), the decision 
to crown “Friday on my mind” was not unexpected: 
Australians still like to think of themselves as working class stiffs with half 
an eye always on the weekend to come. So it should come as no surprise 
that a song about working class stiffs waiting for the weekend was last night 
named as the best Australian song of all time. 

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Bert Peeters
Bruce Elder, senior music critic for the same daily, echoed that statement 
and then went beyond. What follows is an excerpt of an ABC Radio inter-
view with David Mark, broadcast the same day: 
BRUCE ELDER: I think the appeal of “Friday on my mind” is simply that 
it is the ultimate working class song. It’s the song for every kid who has 
ever been bored at work and who goes on Monday and dreams of what’s 
going to happen on Friday, and the joys of what’s going to happen on the 
weekend.
DAVID MARK: Is it a great song, or is it just that it symbolises so much 
for so many people? 
BRUCE ELDER: I think it’s probably a great song. It’s beautifully crafted. 
Three minutes, or probably only two-and-a-half minutes. And it distils down – 
it’s what pop music’s all about – it’s distilling down an entire life experi-
ence into two and a half minutes and saying something about the human 
condition. And amazingly enough I think it does that very well. 
Mark’s judgment, viz. that here we have a song that “symbolises so much 
for so many people”, is quite accurate; Elder’s opinion, viz. that the song 
“says something about the human condition” – in general – is much more 
debatable. Still, it is the latter kind of statement which resurfaces, at least in