Take On Me — a-ha
#365Songs: June 9
I’m not writing these essays on music to tell you about songs you don’t already know.
Although, that’s fun.
I like sharing music. I like learning about music. I also like listening to a familiar song, again, for the first time.
Omnipresent pop songs become white noise — always on, always puttering around in the background, inconsequential, overly familiar. You can sing every lyric even if you’ve never chosen, specifically, to play that particular song.
I don’t know — but I know you feel this way about a-ha’s “Take On Me.” Do you like “Take On Me?” Maybe. Maybe not. But honestly, I’d have to have a serious chat with someone that openly disliked “Take On Me” because they’re probably a nihilist, maybe a sociopath. That kind of shit goes on a permanent record. It’s a perfectly, perfunctorily, pleasant pop hit from the 1980s with an inventive hook.
But in terms of iconic, essential, recognizable pop/synth lines from the 1980s, “Take On Me” must rank among the finest ever recorded. It’s up there with “Billie Jean,” “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These),” and “Blue Monday.” Still, for some reason, a-ha gets cast aside as a one-hit wonder, a kitschy side-act. Some of this is due to the song eclipsing the band. The song was so big, so popular, that a-ha got swept into the arbitrary “one-hit wonder” purgatory.
Since this is SYNTH WEEK on #365Songs, let’s rescue a-ha and “Take On Me” from Dante’s Sonic Inferno. At least for today.
As teenagers, a-ha band members Magne Furuholmen and Pål Waaktaar (later Waaktaar-Savoy after his marriage) played in a band called Bridges. This punk-adjacent Norwegian act released their debut album in 1980. One of the songs they wrote, “Miss Eerie” featured lyrics and elements that would eventually become “Take On Me.” It was discarded for being too poppy for the band’s catalog. It’s a pretty interesting demo for what would become the gargantuan radio hit.
Present at a Bridges’ show sometime between 1978 and 1979 was songwriter and vocalist Morten Harket. Bridges disbanded after a failed attempt to sell Bridges’ second album in London. Harket convinced Furuholmen and Waaktaar to abandon the Oslo punk scene in 1981 and return to London with a new, more marketable sound. They named the band “a-ha” after a “terrible” song Waaktaar had in his back pocket.
They began reworking “Miss Eerie” to showcase Harket’s impressive vocal range, renaming it “Lesson One.” After another production pass, the band released “Take on Me” as a single in the UK. Take a listen.
The pieces are all there, but they’re wrong. You’ll notice that Harket’s vocals carry the song. It’s a hit song. You can hear it. It’s the synth that’s just not working. At times they sound like a kiddie piano, lacking the depth and production of the final version. Later on, its a lack of polish and musicality. The end totally lacks drama.
For a brief moment in time, I tried to develop an ear for electronic music production. I created ten or so different tracks. A friend who produced real estate video tours wanted one of my songs for some free background noise. I obliged, knowing that’s the best it was ever going to get. That’s the entirety of my electronic music career.
This version of “Take On Me” sounds a lot like that song. Thin and spineless, but not unlistenable.
On the strength of Harket’s marketability — movie star looks with Roy Orbison voice — a-ha singed to Warner Brothers America. The label brought in producer Alan Tarney whose biggest success at that point had been Cliff Richard’s “We Don’t Talk Anymore.” Tarney coaxed something else out of Magne Furuholmen’s orchestration — a fuller sound, cleaner production, and a coda instead of a withering fade out.
Still, the song failed to catch fire in the UK. The label’s London office refused widespread support for an already failed pop song. Warner exec Andrew Wickham refused to give up on it. He called in music video director Steve Barron.
Although the medium was only a couple years old, Barron had already laid claim to the title of “best in the business” based on Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video, released the year prior. The creative concept, delivered by Warner Bros. exec Jeff Ayeroff, was clear from the beginning — a mixture of animation and live action video called rotoscoping. He hired illustrators Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger to create pencil-sketch animation based on Patterson’s 1981 student film called Commuter.
The song and video won six MTV Video Music Awards including Best New Artist, Best Concept Video, Most Experimental, and Viewer’s Choice. And, most importantly for a-ha, the song finally became a hit, topping charts in 13 different countries.
But is the song just popular because of the video? Hell no.
When Warner signed a-ha to their label, the studio was able to offer equipment and studio time far beyond what had been available to the band. They’d made a big investment on a band based on a hit song that couldn’t find its audience. For that final recording, Furuholmen and Tarney further developed the drums and synth line.
If you go back to the original recording of “Miss Eerie,” they already had the vocals. They needed someone like Harket to sing it. He nailed the incredibly broad vocal range. The 1984 track is remarkably close to the final version.
The new lineup consisted of a LinnDrum beat, a DX7 bass, and PPG Wave. The main, iconic, instantly recognizable riff came courtesy of a Roland Juno-60 doubled with another synth — my research suggests the DX-7 pulled double duty here.
Compare the original synth with the final 1985 version. Notice the bones of the original remain almost beat for beat — but listen how radically the sound changes when the synth is layered and compounded. A tweak here and a tone shift there. Despite the sameness, it’s a total qualitative sea change.
“Take On Me” went from being real estate background noise to not only one of the most iconic songs of the decade, but arguably one of the most iconic pop songs ever.
Behold the power of synthesizers in hands that know how to use it. These aren’t just vapid beep boops — it’s a transcendent, industry-changing sound.
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