Harket’s yearning voice spanned two and a half octaves, culminating in a super-high falsetto E5 that has undone many an overconfident karaoke singer. So the group recorded the song again, this time with producer Alan Tarney, who made the arrangement more dynamic. Do people actually look like this?’ Morten Harket was one of the best-looking men in the world,” Ayeroff said a few years ago in an interview for the book “I Want My MTV.” Īyeroff knew a-ha was perfect for the age of music video. Then, Ayeroff saw a picture of the group. Records executive, was visiting England when a British colleague played him “Take on Me.” It reminded Ayeroff of his favorite singer, Roy Orbison. The world seemed to be saying no to a-ha, but the band had a guardian angel. A few months later, now remixed, the song flopped again. They got a record deal in England, and “Take on Me” was released in October 1984, selling only 300 copies. Eventually, Waaktaar-Savoy rewrote the lyrics with a new chorus, adding a rising, three-note melody (“Taaaaaake onnnn meeee”) inspired by the famous three-note octave motif of Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” “We couldn’t make the hook fit into a song,” Harket says. Though he spotted the hook as a ticket to success, he couldn’t have anticipated how many times the trio would have to rewrite and re-release the song.īridges first used the hook in what they called “The Juicy Fruit Song.” (It’s on YouTube.) With Harket, it morphed into a song called “Lesson One,” then changed again into “All’s Well That Ends Well and Moves With the Sun.” “I knew then, ‘That’s it.’ That’s the song that’s gonna make it happen,” says Harket. “I confronted them and said, ‘Play me something.’” In the basement of the house where Waaktaar-Savoy’s parents lived, Furuholmen went to an old piano and played the song’s hook, which he’d written when he was 15.
When the three met, Harket insisted his bandmates prove themselves.
#Take on me unplugged piano tv#
Last year, when “Take on Me” enjoyed one of its periodic resurgences as a presence in TV shows and films, the website Quartzy called it “one of the biggest songs of 2018.” It’s not uncommon for new songs to pass that threshold, but to date, only three songs from the entire 20th century have reached that mark: “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana and Queen’s “ Bohemian Rhapsody.” And “Take on Me” still averages 480,000 views per day on YouTube, according to a website spokesperson.
On YouTube, the clip is close to surpassing 1 billion views. The memorable boy-meets-girl-and-is-chased-by-men-with-wrenches animated video, an innovative highlight of early MTV, propelled much of the song’s success. Most of the decade’s synth-pop hits are as outdated as a Walkman or have vanished like Blockbuster video, but “Take on Me” has outlasted its peers and even thrived in the streaming era. The ‘80s was a decade of outrageous musical novelties and wonders. In the 34 years since “Take on Me” became the Norwegian trio’s world-conquering hit, it has not only endured but also has been transformed into a meme that crosses generations and centuries. He knew the fleet, perky melody would launch him into a noteworthy music career. The first time a-ha singer Morten Harket heard the now-famous synthesizer hook in “Take on Me,” a bell rang in his head.
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