Scoundrel Days by a-ha

Scoundrel Days, a-ha's second album, arrived on Warner Bros. on October 6, 1986, with the pop world waiting to see how the Oslo trio would follow Hunting High and Low, which had reached number 2 in Britain and 15 in America. They cut it in early 1986 at RG Jones Recording Studios in Wimbledon, with Alan Tarney, the man behind "Take On Me" and "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.", producing most of it and Gerry Kitchingham engineering.

This time the songs belong to Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and Magne Furuholmen alone, with Morten Harket sticking to singing, and the pair produced 3 tracks themselves, "I've Been Losing You" among them. It's a darker, twitchier record than the debut, Yamaha DX7 and Roland Juno synths grinding against the guitars and Harket's soaring voice stretched tight over songs full of dread. "I've Been Losing You" is the proof: taut, anxious and huge.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.