Colin Hay
Australian musician
Colin James Hay (born 29 June 1953) is a Scottish-Australian musician. He came to prominence as the lead vocalist and the sole continuous member of the band Men at Work, and later as a solo artist. Hay is a member of the band Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.
Hay has made appearances in films such as Cosi (1996) and in television shows such as The Resident, The Larry Sanders Show, JAG, The Mick Molloy Show, A Million Little Things, and Scrubs. In Scrubs, he performs an acoustic version of the Men at Work hit "Overkill" in the first episode of the second season titled, My Overkill, along with a bit of the acoustic version of "Down Under" during a cutaway of the second episode of the seventh season titled, My Hard Labor. His music also appeared in the television series What About Brian, The Black Donnellys, Cane, and the BBC medical drama Casualty.
Early life
Colin James Hay was born on 29 June 1953 in Kilwinning, North Ayrshire, Scotland to James and Isabella Hay. In 1967, when he was 14, the Hays emigrated to Melbourne in Australia. His parents owned a small music shop; his father, a piano tuner, had been a stage singer and dancer in Glasgow.
Career
1978–1986: Men at Work
In 1978, Hay met Ron Strykert and they formed an acoustic duo.
The public source identifies “Colin Hay” as australian musician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Colin, Australian and musician.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q725969. VIAF identifies the subject as 59278689. The Library of Congress control number is n92004570. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1996, 1967 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Colin Hay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.