A-ha’s “Take On Me” is as good as one-hit wonders come.
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Released in the mid-80s, the Norwegian band’s song found great success both on the charts and with awards. It spent 27 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at No. 1. The song also nabbed six MTV Video Music Awards.
Those facts are a surprise given that the track initially flopped upon its release.
In 2010, keyboardist Magne Furuholmen told Rolling Stone how he and bandmates Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and Morten Harket were initially inspired to record the song.
For his part, Furuholmen said he took cues from the Doors’ “almost mathematical” approach to melody, as well as their commitment to bringing classical music into pop music, when recording the song with his own “Scandinavian flavor.” Vocalist Harket then “came up with an inflection of the melody that turned it much more interesting,” Furuholmen said.
The result was not what the band envisioned. When the single bombed, A-ha wanted a second chance to get the song right.
The Video That Made a Hit
The second version, this one with producer Alan Tarney, also did not do well. Despite that, A-ha’s label in the U.S. decided to cut a second video for the track, and that wound up being the key to its success.
“I have no doubt that the video made the song a hit,” Furuholmen said. “The song has a super catchy riff, but it is a song that you have to hear a few times. And I don’t think it would’ve been given the time of day without the enormous impact of the video.”
In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, Harket remarked, “It was a steady climb, getting to No. 2 in the UK and No. 1 in America in 1985. It was what we’d been waiting for and expecting to happen. It was meant to be. Since then, the song and video have been played to death around the world. It has its own career. It lives its own life.”
What Happened to A-ha After “Take On Me”?
After the song took off, the band expected success with their follow-up track, “The Sun Always Shines on T.V.” However, it only ended up peaking at No. 20, and it was the last time in the band’s history that they nabbed a spot on the U.S. charts.
As for why they couldn’t recreate their success, Furuholmen told Rolling Stone, “We were three headstrong Norwegians saying, ‘No, we don’t want to record another “Take on Me”, we’re doing our own thing.’”
“We never expected to become teenage idols, so for us it was like, ‘Let’s move on,’” he added. “But for the record company this was a successful formula, and anything we did to break with that was seen as a disease.”
While A-Ha may be classified as a one-hit wonder in the U.S., the band went on to have a long career in Europe. They released their latest album, True North, in 2022.
Photo by Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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