“Take On Me” by a-ha

"Take On Me" needed three tries to become a hit, and the one that finally got there was Alan Tarney's 1985 production for Hunting High and Low, the debut album from Norway's a-ha. The first go, recorded in 1984 with Tony Mansfield producing and John Ratcliff remixing, sank without a trace in Britain, and so did the first of two releases the following year. Magne Furuholmen, Morten Harket and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy share the writing credit.

Tarney's take is synth-pop at a sprint: a bright, bubbling keyboard riff with acoustic guitars and drums packed in underneath, and a vocal that leaps skyward on the chorus as if it's trying to clear a fence.

What really sold it was the video. Steve Barron directed it, dropping the band into a live-action world of pencil-sketch animation, and MTV played it so heavily that the single went all the way to number one on Billboard's Hot 100 in October 1985, the same month it hit number two in the UK. At the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards the clip took home six awards and was up for two more.

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