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a-ha

Three Norwegians who moved to London, had a flop with Take On Me twice, and then reached number one with it on the strength of a pencil-sketch video.

Origin
Oslo, Norway
Years active
1982-2010, 2015-present
Genres
synth-pop
Labels
Warner Bros., Universal, RCA

Oslo to London

a-ha formed in Oslo in 1982 around Pål Waaktaar (later Waaktaar-Savoy) on guitar, Magne Furuholmen on keyboards and Morten Harket on vocals. Waaktaar and Furuholmen had already played together in a band called Bridges, which made two albums and wrote the first version of a song called Miss Eerie. That song would eventually become Take On Me. The plan to go to London and get a record deal had been in place for years, Waaktaar said. In Norway at that time one radio station played a couple of hours of rock a week, and the three felt they could only do so much at home.

They left for London, and Harket picked the name from a song in Waaktaar's songbook. "It was a terrible song but a great name," he said. They hired the studio of the producer John Ratcliff because it had a Space Invaders machine, and he introduced them to the manager Terry Slater, who signed them to Warner Bros. Records UK. Early influences were the Doors, Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen and Ingmar Bergman, and in London they fell for the synth-pop of Soft Cell, Yazoo and OMD.

Hunting High and Low

The debut, Hunting High and Low, was recorded in 1984 and 1985 at Eel Pie Studios in Twickenham and produced by Tony Mansfield, John Ratcliff and Alan Tarney. The first single, Take On Me, did not chart in Britain in 1984, and Tarney's re-recording flopped as well. The third attempt came with a video by Steve Barron that mixed live action with rotoscoped pencil-sketch animation. Wide exposure on MTV took it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1985 and to number two in Britain. Warner executive Jeff Ayeroff suggested the idea for the video.

The Sun Always Shines on T.V. followed and went to number one in the UK in January 1986. The album reached number one in Norway, number two in the UK and number 15 in the United States. The band were nominated for the Grammy for Best New Artist, and the two videos won eight MTV Video Music Awards between them. The last single, Hunting High and Low, added strings and reached number five in Britain in 1986.

Darker records

Scoundrel Days came out in October 1986, written entirely by Waaktaar and Furuholmen, and leaned toward rock. It sold more than six million copies, and Cry Wolf from it was the band's last single on the Hot 100. Stay on These Roads (1988) followed, a third British number two. It carried the title track and a reworked version of The Living Daylights, their theme for the 1987 James Bond film. East of the Sun, West of the Moon (1990) opened with a cover of the Everly Brothers' Crying in the Rain.

In January 1991 they headlined a night of Rock in Rio II at the Maracana stadium in front of 198,000 people. Furuholmen later said they played to the biggest crowd in the world and were ignored. Memorial Beach (1993) was a commercial disappointment, the band played two concerts at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, and then an unofficial hiatus began.

Returns and farewell

A performance at the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, for which Waaktaar wrote Summer Moved On, brought them back. Minor Earth Major Sky (2000) went to number one in Norway and Germany. Lifelines (2002) and Analogue (2005) followed, the second with Graham Nash singing backing vocals on two songs. On 2 July 2005 they played Live 8 in Berlin, opening with Hunting High and Low, and in August 2005 they played to 120,000 people in Frogner Park in Oslo.

Foot of the Mountain (2009) went to number one in Germany. They announced that they would split after the 2010 Ending on a High Note tour, and played farewell shows in Oslo. In August 2011 they played Stay on These Roads at Oslo Spektrum at a national memorial service for the victims of the 2011 Norway attacks. They reunited in 2015 for Rock in Rio and the album Cast in Steel, recorded an MTV Unplugged set in Giske in 2017 and in 2019 began a tour on which they played Hunting High and Low from start to finish. Their eleventh studio album, True North, appeared in October 2022.

Members

Records

Songs

Depeche Mode, Coldplay, U2, Pet Shop Boys

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Film and video

Sources

  1. a-ha, Wikipedia
  2. Hunting High and Low, Wikipedia
  3. a-ha albums, the complete guide, Classic Pop (2022-01-31)
  4. Making a-ha: Hunting High And Low, Classic Pop
  5. a-ha: Living A Three Boys' Adventure Tale, Classic Pop
  6. a-ha official site, a-ha