Chris Hipkins was only 7 years old at the time so this particular track might have walked on by him, but it could have been something of a theme tune this week as he struggles for what political analysts like to call "cut through".
Mr Hipkins is far from unique in facing this problem. All leaders of opposition parties struggle to get their message through in the months after an election loss — particularly so if they were soundly thrashed, as Labour was.
They and their MPs have to go through the demoralising experience of watching their legislative achievements being eviscerated in the House, an unedifying process which is exacerbated by the public which voted the new government in not being terribly interested in hearing what the old lot have to say for themselves.
To his credit, Mr Hipkins has recognised this and not shied away from it: he has frequently said that Labour will need to offer new policies at the next election because the electorate so emphatically rejected the party last September.
Of course, change is all very well, and election 2023 was indeed a change election.
But Labour cannot simply announce that the leopard has changed its spots without convincing evidence that that is the case. Equally though, more than two years away from the next election is not the time to be rolling out new policy. Put bluntly, no-one cares.
The Labour leader was in Dunedin on Monday, and his public meeting at Tuhura Otago Museum — well attended given that the rain kept falling down outside throughout — was a microcosm of all these headaches.
"We weren’t the government we wanted to be, maybe we were the government we had to be", Mr Hipkins rued, as he mulled over having to deal with a pandemic, natural disasters and economic shocks during his tenure.
His opening remarks attempted to tap into the wellspring of dissatisfaction that Labour feels exists within voters who switched from the red team to any of the coalition parties at the last election, that what they have ended up with is not what they wanted.
"There is an alternative", Mr Hipkins thundered in what might not be the final Labour campaign slogan for 2026 but what is serving the party as a rallying cry for now.
But what exactly is that alternative offering? Best not to expect specifics right now, much to the disappointment of some at the meeting who were clamouring for Labour to back a capital gains tax.
Mr Hipkins would not go that far — many Labour strategists remain convinced that while such a "sticking it to the rich" policy plays well to its base, that it also scares off the aspirational middle class voters it needs to return to government.
But he did suggest some form of taxation of profit earned from capital would be on Labour’s agenda. It would come as no surprise if there was a lot of private polling on this question during the next 12 months.
Mr Hipkins is keen to reframe the tax debate as a discussion about what services government should provide, and having established that deciding how to pay for them. His, likely forlorn, hope is that tax not be seen as how much the government is taking from people’s pockets.
Likewise, in a thoughtful moment, he hoped that the looming bicentenary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi would be seen as something that brought the country together rather than tearing it apart, a none too subtle dig at the governing parties use of wedge politics.
While it is all very well feeling that you are on the right side of history, as Mr Hipkins undoubtedly believes he will be, that is to ignore that Labour lost many conservative working class voters to New Zealand First, and to a lesser extent National and Act New Zealand, on exactly this issue. Getting those voters back while not alienating another core Labour constituency will require Solomonic skills.
Climate change is an area where Mr Hipkins clearly feels Labour does offer his touted alternative and was an issue he returned to frequently. He was also more combative than might have been expected on National’s pet policy area of infrastructure, scoffing that New Zealand could not "pave its way to prosperity" and suggesting Labour would have a more people-first approach to pipes and other projects.
And with that he was off to Labour’s caucus retreat in Auckland — a destination symptomatic of the party’s woes.
Mr Hipkins has been regular visitor to the city of sails as he tries to restore Labour’s fortunes in bedrock territory where he should really not have to be campaigning at all.
But if Mr Hipkins is indeed humming Simple Minds by now, he might be struck by a couple of lines from the song’s third verse: "Don’t you try and pretend, It’s my feeling we’ll win in the end."
