Music is weird. One day a song is everywhere, and the next, it’s a trivia question nobody can answer. But then there’s A-ha Take On Me. You know the synth line. You know the high note. Most importantly, you know that sketch-animation video that looked like nothing else in 1985. It's a miracle of pop engineering that almost never happened. Honestly, if you look at the timeline of how this track was made, it’s a wonder the band didn't just give up after the first two failed attempts.
The song wasn't an instant hit. Far from it.
When people talk about A-ha Take On Me, they usually focus on Morten Harket’s ridiculous vocal range or that rotoscoped music video. But the actual "soul" of the track is a lesson in persistence. It’s a story about a bridge, a pencil-sketch girl, and a keyboard riff that was originally called "The Lesson."
The Riff That Refused to Die
The core of the song actually dates back to a previous band called Bridges. Magne Furuholmen and Pål Waaktaar-Savoy were messily experimenting with sounds in Oslo long before they met Morten. That iconic synth hook? It was basically a practice exercise. It was clunky. It was slower. It didn't have that "spark" yet.
When Morten joined the mix, the energy changed. But Warner Bros. struggled to market them. The first version of A-ha Take On Me was produced by Tony Mansfield. It sounded... flat. It was thin, overly digital, and lacked the punchy drums we associate with the 80s. It flopped. It sold maybe 300 copies. Most bands would have been dropped by their label right then and there.
But Terry Slater, their manager, believed in the bones of the song. He pushed for a re-recording with Alan Tarney. Tarney understood that the song needed to breathe. He stripped back the over-production and let the Juno-60 synthesizer do the heavy lifting. That's the version you hear on the radio today. It has a specific "bounce" that the original version lacked entirely.
It still didn't hit. Not at first.
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The label realized that in the MTV era, a song wasn't just a song anymore. It was a visual. They hired Steve Barron—the guy who directed "Billie Jean"—and gave him a massive budget and a long timeline. They used a technique called rotoscoping. It involves artists tracing over live-action footage frame by frame. It took sixteen weeks. It was grueling. But when that video hit the airwaves, the song finally exploded.
That High Note and the Science of the Earworm
Let’s talk about Morten Harket’s voice. Specifically, that "In a day or twoooo" climax.
Harket hits an $E_5$ in full head voice. Most male pop singers of the era stayed in a much lower register or used a very thin falsetto. Harket’s note has power. It feels desperate and soaring at the same time. This is part of why the song stays in your head. It’s a physical feat.
Musicologists often point out that A-ha Take On Me utilizes a "leading tone" resolution that keeps the listener in a state of mild tension. The chords aren't complex. It’s mostly Bm, E, A, and D. Standard stuff. But the way the melody skips across the syncopated beat creates a sense of forward motion. It feels like running. It feels like the comic book chase in the video.
Interestingly, the lyrics are actually kind of nonsensical if you look at them too closely. "Odds and ends / Break my heart." What does that even mean? It doesn't matter. The phonetic sounds of the words—the hard "T" in "Take" and the open "O" in "On"—are designed for maximum resonance. It's a phonetic masterpiece even if the poetry is a bit thin.
Why the 2017 MTV Unplugged Version Changed Everything
For years, people treated A-ha as a bit of a "one-hit wonder" in America, even though they were massive superstars in Europe and South America for decades. They were the "pretty boys" with the cartoon video. Then, in 2017, they did an acoustic session.
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They performed a stripped-back, melancholic version of A-ha Take On Me.
Suddenly, the world saw the song differently. Without the upbeat drums and the bright synths, it became a haunting ballad about mortality and fleeting time. It went viral all over again. It showed up in Deadpool 2 and The Last of Us. It proved that the songwriting was sturdy enough to survive without the 80s gimmicks.
It’s rare for a pop song to have that kind of "second life." Usually, 80s hits are trapped in amber. They represent a specific summer. This song managed to break out of its own decade.
Misconceptions About the Band
A lot of people think A-ha vanished after 1986.
That couldn't be further from the truth. In 1991, they played for 198,000 people at the Maracanã Stadium in Brazil. That was a world record at the time. They’ve released eleven studio albums. Pål Waaktaar-Savoy is a prolific songwriter who has been nominated for countless awards. They aren't just "the guys from that one video." They are technically proficient musicians who grew tired of the "pop star" label very quickly.
They actually hated the "pretty boy" image. They wanted to be taken seriously like The Doors or Joy Division. You can hear that tension in their later albums like Scoundrel Days. It’s much darker, much more atmospheric. But A-ha Take On Me is the shadow they can never quite outrun.
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The Digital Legacy: One Billion Views
In 2020, the music video for A-ha Take On Me hit one billion views on YouTube.
It joined a very exclusive club of 20th-century videos to hit that milestone, alongside "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "November Rain." It stays relevant because it appeals to the "analog" nostalgia of Gen Z while maintaining a high-quality aesthetic that doesn't look "cheap" despite its age. Hand-drawn art is timeless in a way that early CGI simply isn't.
If you try to watch a video from 1995 with early digital effects, it looks terrible. But the pencil sketches of 1985 still look like fine art.
How to Truly Appreciate the Track Today
If you want to get the most out of this song, stop listening to it on tinny smartphone speakers.
- Find a high-fidelity version: Listen to the 2015 remastered version on a good pair of headphones. You’ll hear a secondary synth line in the left channel that is almost always lost in radio play.
- Watch the 'Making Of' documentary: The band released a three-part series on YouTube detailing the struggle to get the song right. It humanizes the process and shows how close they came to failing.
- Compare the versions: Play the 1984 "Mansfield" version and then the 1985 "Tarney" version back-to-back. It is the best education you can get on why "production" matters just as much as "songwriting."
A-ha Take On Me isn't just a relic of the 80s. It’s a testament to the idea that a good idea deserves a second—and third—chance. It took three recordings and two music videos to get it right. Most people stop after the first mistake. A-ha didn't. That's why we're still talking about it.
To explore the deeper technicality of their discography, listen to the album Hunting High and Low in its entirety to understand how the track fits into their broader synth-pop narrative. Pay close attention to the track "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.," which many critics actually consider to be the superior composition.