Alphabetically, shouldn't this band be the first 'A'? Well, here we are. Another one hit wonder? Yes. And no. They name is stylized in lower-case, and sometimes one of those three letters is italicized, but not consistently.
While many listeners will be familiar with "Take On Me," which is actually their first ever single and the first song on their first album, the band has continued slowly but steadily to make music since 1982 through the present. They are a national treasure in their native Norway. They have at least ten albums and well over a hundred songs. I had previously heard literally none of these songs other than "Take On Me." I've subsequently been led to believe that both "The Sun Always Shines on TV" and "Hunting High and Low" were mild hits that other people actually know; I can see why: both tracks grew on me, but despite being enjoying they were still utterly unknown to me before this listening. "Crying in the Rain," actually a cover version of The Everly Brother's 1963 single, also had minor charting success, although that one failed to register much with me. "Stay on These Roads" barely cracks the hits category, but I like that one. Actually, I liked a lot of these songs, and I found all of it surprisingly tolerable. They are far more lush and cinematic than I ever gave them credit for based on limited exposure, but perhaps the sweeping impressive nature of their most famous video should have been an aesthetic hint.
OH boy that video was a big one. Most people of a certain age will remember that video. Some of us remember the cute girl. Some of us remember the cute boy. Some of us remember both. It was from before my time, technically, in 1984, but it must have remained in heavy rotation on MTV for decades because it was still around for me to see years later. I love the keyboard part(s), and the urgency of the drums in the chorus, which is basically electro-clash.
In the iconic video the song becomes much more than whatever it originally was about. It becomes the soundtrack to an epic and engrossing adventure, albeit an incredibly concise one. The narrative itself is brilliant storytelling and compelling salesmanship. Not only do we get a whole story in three minutes, we are introduced to the band via their catchiest number and meet its beautiful blonde Nordic cute people not just as musician but, especially in the case of lead singer Morten Harket, as compelling characters in a brief drama. Oh and that chemistry you're seeing between actress Bunty Bailey and Harket is very real - she also stars in their next video (I'm not gonna lie- learning that is when I decided to google it) and she subsequently had an actual relationship with Harket. She was also in a Billy Idol video, but not much else. Surely, she and director Steve Barron, who also shot Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," get some credit for the song's enduring staying power. MJ was supposedly at the band's first US concert and invited them to Neverland Ranch....I bet.
Harket has got a pretty incredible voice that can be both smooth and also hit really high notes without screeching. He's actually in the Guinness World Records book for holding the longest live note: 20.2 seconds in "Summer Moved On." Not bad at all for a come-back single, which in May of 2000 was their first new music in six years. You're not gonna believe this, but they also hold the world record for having the biggest rock concert attendance of all time: 198,000 at Rock in Rio. That's a lot of people. This band was huge throughout South America in the late 1980s but also in the 90s! Their fans editing Wikipedia want us to know that 198,000 people is three times the audience that George Michael, Prince, and Guns n Roses performed for at the same event in 1991...and that when despite breaking the record the international press ignored them for younger acts it was demoralizing for the band. There's actually a whore series of bad things that gives this band a bit a persecution complex. First they don't win the Best New Artist Grammy in 1986, then when they play the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 1998 their bit is cut from the televised highlights, then nobody wanted to talk about their record breaking concert attendance, then they play Live8--which is a big deal as Pink Floyd reunited at it--and they have technical problems that make them have to scrap one of their four songs, then they played the iTunes festival in 2009 and everyone's set except theirs was available for download...
AllMusic has an excellent line about one of their albums, which could apply to any of them: "a nicely crafted collection of songs...while not an album one can discuss at length, it's an album that's a pleasure to listen to." So true. It's effective, if not necessarily intriguing or complex. It's pop music that matters because it was crafted by humans that care about what they are doing and do it well enough; it's not created, packaged, and sold by committee thinking trying to cash in on the latest trends.
Their James Bond song is a memorable title-track from The Living Daylights, which might ring some bells for casual fans. Everything after their
1993 album Memorial Beach is available in America only as an import, which is weird and somewhat shocking. That's several albums. They might not have all the urgency and consistency of the earlier albums, but they aren't bad at all.
They were supposed to end on a high note in 2010 with a final world tour that hit six continents. They came back in 2015 and even recorded another album, Cast in Steel, which again I must say is pretty good. It straddles 80s-nostalgia and more modern sounds brilliantly. One thing they do well is that none of their many albums sound like a major departure from their previous work. While the sound has evolved, it's been an organic and smooth transition, almost imperceptible until one listens to their first album compared to their most recent. Even some of those altered sound might be attributed to changing production standards.
The band seems determined to emphasize that they are the same band they've always been all this time. It is still the same original three guys performing together (the drummer always seems to be just whoever). To that end, their most recent, and some would say crowning, achievement is a career-spanning acoustic re-imagining of their catalog. Their episode of MTV's Unplugged takes place at an obscure location on the summer solstice and is everything that series was supposed to be but eventually got away from: incredibly intimate, unfamiliar versions of familiar songs. Hearing these beautiful, organic versions of the songs gives them an impressive timeless feel, instead of anchoring them to the anachronistic sounds of the 80s. It's clear the band put time and effort into these arrangements that are fascinating in their newness while revealing the strength of the underlying songwriting, highlighted by the stark instrumentation. Several European and American performers join them for the show, including Ian McCulloch, who joins them for one of their songs and then helps them aptly cover "The Killing Moon," by his own band, Echo & the Bunnymen. The modern-yet-nostalgic clip of them playing "Take on Me" as the finale had already gone viral even before the song was used in Deadpool 2, which they tell me is hilarious. And damn these Nordic men age well!
If they stopped now it would be a kinda beautiful circular closure as that last song on their last album is "Take on Me." In some ways the song is synonymous with the 1980s. As evidence, here's just one of many pop culture examples where the song is literally used to indicate the historical setting of the 1980s: in this case an obligatory Simpsons reference, albeit a foreign dub. It's been covered by many people include Tori Amos, Sara Bareilles, and Reel Big Fish. Yes, the ska version is excellent. Still, I'm not entirely sure what to make of their mixed legacy. They seem to remembered almost wholly for their singular cultural contribution that's emblematic of the 80s, rather than as a full band with multiple songs and albums. Chris Martin of Coldplay as spoken highly of them, for better or worse. Adam Clayton of U2 has defended them. So did Pitbull. He notably samples "Take on Me" in this song with Xtina; it's hard for me to watch and even harder to listen to, and really just makes me want a hard-house remix without this joker clowning around on the track. They do get Jason Lytle (Grandaddy) dropping their name, especially referencing the often forgotten Cast in Steel, which is really nice. They aren't entirely forgotten for their musical contributions. The band has not exactly run away from their one hit wonder, but there is a slight bittersweet tragedy if that's all they are remembered for. So, if you like that one song then check out some of their other stuff! If not, then don't bother.
[My 7-year-old daughter just came up to my desk and said, "Good-- you're finally writing about A-ha so we can stop listening to them."]
