Episode 301: A-ha

“Take On Me” by A-ha is an iconic hit of the 1980s. It came out in October 1985 with an equally iconic music video that helped define the age of MTV. It hit #1 in the US and in countries all over the world. And it’s still massively popular today. It currently has over two and a half billion streams on Spotify. So, with all of that, it’s easy to imagine that this was all inevitable. But actually, the song took so many steps and missteps before it became the hit that everybody knows. I talked to Paul Waaktaar-Savoy from A-ha, who wrote the original bones of the song back when he was a teenager in Norway, years before it came out. The song actually came out and flopped TWICE in the UK, before it found a foothold in the US. So for this episode, Paul took me through the whole history of the song, and all the different versions that existed. And he told me how he and his bandmates, Magne Furuholmen and Morten Harket, pushed and pushed and persevered. “Take On Me” was their first single as a band, and it made them the most successful Norwegian pop group of all time.

Click to view slideshow.

You can buy or stream “Take On Me” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

footnotes:
“Lesson One” – first demo version of “Take On Me”
Alan Tarney – producer & backing vocals
Gerry Kitchingham – mixer
Steve Barron – music video director
Bridges
“Aladdin Sane” by David Bowie
Joe Cocker
Melody Maker and Music Express magazines
John Ratcliff, Terry Slater, Andrew Wickham, Tony Mansfield, and Jeff Ayeroff
Fairlight CMI
PPG Wave synthesizer
Yamaha DX7 synthesizer
“Commuter” – film

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