a-ha

A name that sounds like an exclamation straight out of a comic book, a frontman with a model's physique, and a melodic, glossy sound in the classic style of the frivolous 80's. How could a-ha ever have hoped to get through the critics' gauntlet unscathed? Impossible, at least in the short term, because, as so often happens, time would prove a fair judge, eventually restoring the credibility denied to the Norwegian band back then, despite the tons of records sold and the freshness of songs that in no time managed to lodge themselves in the collective imagination. A commercial success that was entirely unexpected for those "three imaginary boys" from the Norwegian fjords, who grew up worshipping the Doors and the rock of the 60s-70s, yet were fully aware of the sounds and moods dominating the most colorful and glamorous decade.

Along the fjords

The embryo of a-ha came to life along the Norwegian fjords, but under a different name. The band, which included the very young Pål Waaktaar (then not yet nineteen) and Magne Furuholmen (not even of legal age, but already a skilled keyboardist), was in fact called Bridges. Alongside them were Viggo Bondi and Øystein Jevanord, budding musicians who would not have the luck of joining the group's second life, the one under the a-ha name. Their debut LP "Fakkeltog (A Torch-light Procession)", pressed in a thousand copies in the summer of 1980, reveals an unexpected compositional maturity and remarkable instrumental skill, with the ghost of Jim Morrison and his Doors often hovering in the background. The Bridges experience, in any case, was destined to reach its end soon. Waaktaar and Furuholmen, in fact, wanted to leave Norway for London in search of success. So the follow-up album, "Våkenatt", remained buried in a drawer, and in 1982 the band broke up.

Before attempting to make their move on the London mecca, though, the two friends made contact with a talented and charismatic singer named Morten Harket, whose background was curious for the frontman of a pop-rock band: he had studied theology in a seminary, partly to find shelter from a school system that had shown him its most violent and intolerant side, with serious bullying episodes that had scarred his delicate sensitivity. The three met up in Oslo, at Magne's place, to let the future singer hear some material they had been working on: the first thing Morten heard was the keyboard riff of "Take On Me" (which at the time was called "The Joyfruit Song", and before that "Lesson One").

It would be the presence of the charming, almond-eyed, round-cheeked Harket that would prove the passe-partout to the long-awaited worldwide breakthrough. His looks certainly helped, but so, above all, did a voice with few equals, which would make him one of the most acclaimed vocalists of the decade. On 14 September 1981, the band — still nameless — was formed.

In London, the trio landed at the court of John Ratcliff. The English producer, who would also work with the Dexy's Midnight Runners, was blown away by Harket's crystalline voice and by the refined sensibility of the Norwegians. Everything was ready for the group's official launch — all that was missing was a name. The deciding factor turned out to be the title of a song Morten found in Pål's notebook: "The song itself was terrible, but that name was perfect for us," Harket would recall with amusement years later. A single word: "a-ha", "a term with a positive connotation that doesn't actually mean anything in particular," as Waaktaar explained in 2005.

Having settled permanently into Ratcliff's studio, the three Norwegians were entrusted to the care of a studio guru: producer Tony Mansfield, the man behind the success of artists such as Captain Sensible, Naked Eyes, The Rescue and The B-52's. Mansfield brought a wealth of ideas and one crucial tool, the Fairlight CMI, an advanced digital workstation capable of giving the sound a futuristic edge. In 1984, after numerous failed attempts, a-ha released the single that would change their lives forever. Accompanied by a brilliant animated video using the cutting-edge rotoscoping technique, poised between cartoon and reality and directed by Steve Barron, "Take On Me" sent charts crashing worldwide, topping the rankings in several countries, including the United States. It was an unimaginable breakthrough, one that prompted the Norwegian band to release their debut album, "Hunting High And Low", that same year. And here we discover just how misguided the "one hit wonder" tag really is when applied to a-ha. Besides the second single taken from it — the gorgeous "The Sun Always Shines On Tv" — the album delivers refined, evocative songs such as the aching title track, the epic "Living A Boy's Adventure Tale", and the more electronic "Here I Stand And Face The Rain".

a-ha flooded radio airwaves in every corner of the globe. Success was now unstoppable. "Hunting High And Low" would go on to sell over 11 million copies worldwide and launch the Norwegian band on a hugely successful world tour.

The difficult second album

During the gestation period of their second LP, a-ha were busy with a massive tour that took them everywhere from Canada to Australia to Japan. Naturally, the success of the debut had generated enormous expectations, which Magne sums up like this: "We expected the audience to tell us: 'but there's no Take On Me on this record!' And yes, that would be a good thing, we would have replied." Morten clarifies the point: "We were looking for the freedom to have fun with music, to experiment with new ideas, but we felt all the pressure of the success the first record had brought us." Old songs resurfaced in the band's notebooks, written before the release of "Hunting High And Low", generally darker and more cryptic. Some of these would end up on the new record, curiously making it feel more like a prequel than a sequel to the debut album.

But the Norwegians' creativity at the time was volcanic — much like the Haleakala landscape in Hawaii that would grace the cover of "Scoundrel Days", recorded largely at RG Jones studio in Wimbledon. Magne Furuholmen sums up the record this way: "It's the album that, more than any other, reflects every side of a-ha and where we came from musically, from pure pop to melancholic epic. We had charted the musical path we wanted to follow without looking back, and without worrying about what the label people — who kept asking us for another 'Take On Me' — would think." The cover art, ultimately, plays its part too, removing the physical presence of the three Norwegian teen idols from centre stage and replacing it with those evocative landscape images.

That wouldn't be enough, however, to win over critics like David Quantick, who in the pages of the New Musical Express branded it "a rather ordinary product of the '80s, with the usual modern drums and cutting synths," while at least acknowledging its "melancholic streak." There would, however, also be those at Smash Hits who noticed the shift under way, calling the record "harsher and more ambitious than the debut."

The fact is that "Scoundrel Days" is indeed less immediate than its predecessor, but it's certainly not short of successful melodies and catchy songs capable of lodging themselves permanently in the listener's mind. First and foremost, the single "I've Been Losing You", with its strong symphonic appeal, built cleverly around brass instruments and percussion, with Harket venturing into a new vocal range that becomes especially bold in the melodic chorus. Seemingly romantic, the lyrics actually conceal the story of a killer (introduced, no less, with a drum hit mimicking a gunshot) who seems almost incredulous at his own actions: “Yet I did it all so coldly/ Almost slowly/ Pain for all to see” (“Eppure ho fatto tutto così freddamente/ quasi lentamente/ palese per tutti”), followed by a vivid noir snapshot in the couplet "I can still hear our screams competing/ You're hissing your s's like a snake". A bold single, all things considered, though one that still managed to crack the UK Top 10. "The best James Bond theme that never was," John Bergstrom called it on Popmatters. It's no coincidence that, a year later, a-ha would actually be hired to write a real one: the theme for "The Living Daylights", John Glen's film in which Timothy Dalton played the secret agent for the first time.

No less striking is the other single, "Manhattan Skyline", which alternates the melodic, waltz-like sweetness of the verses with the aggressive, violent "electro-metal" style of the refrain, complete with an electric guitar solo, showing at once the roughest and the most romantic side of a band that had by now carved out its own path within the dazzling saga of the 1980s. Once again, the song is accompanied by a video directed by Steve Barron, this time nodding to the dystopian, eccentric visuals of Terry Gilliam's astonishing "Brazil". Fellow Norwegians Kings Of Convenience would record a curious cover of it in 2001, sealing their devotion to their childhood idols (Erlend Øye, in particular, would admit that the first record he ever bought was none other than "Hunting High And Low").

The original vinyl edition reveals its essentially two-sided nature: a more sumptuous, symphonic side A, sustained at levels of high emotional tension, and an overall lighter, more immediate side B. But it's not all so rigidly structured. Straddling the line between the two styles, for instance, is the catchy "Cry Wolf", another hook-laden number with an unmistakably synth-pop finish that winks at contemporary dance music, moving along with a breezy, playful gait that even indulges in some unlikely nocturnal howling impressions (though it's certainly one of those songs that will never survive the critical gauntlet described above, despite the ambitious Dostoevskyan nod to Raskolnikov of "Crime and Punishment").

But you'd only need to listen to the horror-tinged intro of the title track to realise that the a-ha of the "difficult second album" were also willing to take risks and experiment beyond their comfort zone, brushing up against new wave territory (it's no coincidence that the song's embryo was a track called "The Leap", conceived back in the Bridges days and openly influenced by Joy Division). As Guido Gherardi notes on OndaRock, "Scoundrel Days" opens with a hammering keyboard pulse that punctuates verses with chilling lines delivered by Morten with cynical bitterness. The harshness of the verses, which express, in rather cryptic lines, an oppressive sense of anguish, alternates with the contrasting airiness of the chorus, which instead betrays an irrepressible longing for hope and love. The emotional tension and the jarring contrast are sustained throughout the song right up to the final note, screamed in pain by Morten into the void." Although it was never released as a single, "Scoundrel Days" would become one of the fans' most beloved songs, as well as Magne's own personal favourite by the band. It's also rarely absent from a-ha's live setlists.

A similarly dark, melancholic streak runs through "The Swing Of Things", which behind its wall of synths and convoluted keyboard riffs conceals a sense of anxiety and desolation with lines like “Oh, but how can I speak of the world/ Rushing by/ With a lump in my throat/ And tears in my eyes” (“Oh ma come posso parlare del mondo/ che fugge frenetico/ avendo un nodo alla gola/ e le lacrime agli occhi”), or again: "Oh, there's a worldful out there/ Of people I fear". The synth/guitar arrangement is especially fine, propped up by the driving drumming of American session man Michael Sturgis. Several versions of the song would be released, with slightly different tones: from the icy new wave of the demo versions to the grandeur of the 2002 live rendition "How Can I Sleep With Your Voice In My Head". "The Swing Of Things" would also inspire the title of Jan Omdahl's book about the band, updated and republished in 2010.

Equally disorienting is the intimate interlude of the dreamy, hazy "October", with its elegant arrangement of bass, keyboards and synthetic horns vaguely recalling the world of Burt Bacharach, and a hushed performance from Harket, whose whispered delivery adds yet another facet to his versatility as a vocalist.

But even the deliberately more easy-listening songs on side two, such as "We're Looking For The Whales" or "Maybe Maybe", ooze grace and elegance beneath their glossy surface, while "Soft Rains Of April", with its synthetic strings, harpsichord flourishes and synth inlays, brings down the curtain in a delicately melancholic, nostalgic mood, evoking drizzly Scandinavian afternoons comparable to those of "Rainy Day Memories", the song included by Swedish act Secret Service (the one behind "A Flash In The Night") on their bestselling album "Cutting Corners", released four years earlier.

The light touch of producer Alan Tarney, brought in to replicate the magic formula of the Norwegian band's early hits, helps lend solidity and a substantial melodic sheen, even as the album charts a clear course away from the easy pop path of the debut. The result is a kaleidoscope of melodies and moods, light and melancholy, graced by the flawless singing of Morten Harket, ever more mature and aware of his extraordinary baritenor voice, C2-Bb5: a powerful falsetto with a remarkable five-octave range, allowing him to soar to high vocal peaks and descend to rather deep lows.

It doesn't boast the crushing hits of "Hunting High And Low", but thanks to its cohesion and versatility, "Scoundrel Days" can today be considered the quintessential "classic" a-ha album, with its ten nearly flawless tracks flowing smoothly from start to finish. In 2010 it was digitally remastered, along with the debut, by Bill Inglot and Dan Hersch and reissued by Rhino Entertainment, the prestigious label affiliated with Warner Music specializing in reissues and anthologies, packed with an impressive amount of extra tracks.

Staying on the same roads

The follow-up, "Stay On These Roads", would yield a more uneven result, though it still stands as a-ha's last true major commercial success before their reunion at the dawn of the new millennium. The Norwegian band's subsequent path has indeed gone on with flickering fortunes, marked by reunions, break-up announcements and lineup changes. But even in this later, more mature phase for Harket and co., there's been no shortage of triumphs. In 2005, the album "Analogue" brought them back to the top of the UK charts. And one shouldn't underestimate, for instance, the compositional maturity of an album like "True North" (2022), accompanied by an eponymous documentary film by photographer Stian Andersen and recorded over two days at the Svømmehallen concert hall in Bodø, in collaboration with the local Arctic Philharmonic orchestra, which had already earned praise working with Philip Glass and Anneli Drecker of Bel Canto.

And yet, much like Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Wham! and their peers, a-ha would long be identified with a boyband image with which they really shared little more than the faint outline left on bedroom walls by old posters. But then, as the years passed, perceptions of the Norwegian band shifted substantially. As Alessandro Liccardo notes on OndaRock, "alongside the usual devotion of their fans, they've received authoritative praise from many fellow musicians - among them Coldplay (who have performed "Hunting High And Low" live on several occasions), Morrissey, Carl Perkins and even Leonard Cohen. Their sound was later successfully echoed by Keane and Novastar, and quite a few have pointed out how much "The Sun Always Shines On Tv" influenced the U2 hit "Beautiful Day"" - practically lifting its chorus wholesale, we might add. Then there are the numbers - like the 35 million records sold - and, at times, even the records themselves. Until 2017, a-ha held the Guinness World Record for the largest paying audience at a concert in history, with 198,000 people in Rio de Janeiro in January 1991.

The black-and-white Nordic heroes of the "Take On Me" comic strip have, over time, revealed every shade of their vulnerable emotions. A warm, living, pulsing heart that has managed to counter the cold precision of the synthesizers. And despite the recent sad news about Morten Harket's health, who has publicly revealed he suffers from Parkinson's disease, a-ha's dark days are still far from the shadows of dusk.

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04/04/2026