How a Rejected Song Became a Hit
Third time was a charm for a-ha's 'Take on Me'
A few months ago, I did an interview with Terry Smith for his podcast, Music Talks.
Terry and I come from different countries and different generations, but we share a love of music.
And I had such a great time chatting about my favorite songs with him.
One of those songs we talked about (that I have loved for decades) is Take on Me by a-ha.
It had the coolest music video and just such a happy feeling to the music.
But what’s the story behind Take on Me – and how did a song from an unknown European band become such a big hit in the US?
I was curious…
Our story begins with a Norwegian musician named Magne Furuholmen, and a riff he came up with when he was 15 years old.
He thought it was ‘too pop’ for his band’s sound, so he paired it with harder, punk rock elements.
He called the song Miss Eerie and recorded it with his band in 1981.
The song didn’t go anywhere, and the band broke up.
But Magne kept working on music with one of his former bandmates, Paul Waaktaar-Savoy.
The two young musicians went to London to try to make it, but struggled.
They returned to Norway where they teamed up with singer Morten Harket and formed a new band called a-ha.
When Morten heard that riff Magne had created years earlier, he recognized it was something special.
The band reworked the riff and created a new song called Lesson One to showcase Morten’s vocal range. You can hear it here:
The band wrote more songs and continued refining Lesson One, taking inspiration from a diverse mix of influences, including a Juicy Fruit chewing gum commercial and Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra.
They called their new song Take on Me.
The band moved to London in 1983, where they struggled, but eventually managed to get signed with Warner Brothers Records.
They recorded Take on Me and released it as a single in October 1984.
It flopped – selling a reputed 300 copies.
So the song was re-mixed, and released in Europe again.
And it flopped again.
An ordinary music video was released, featuring the band singing in front of a blue background (and a mysterious figure doing gymnastics) – but still, the song went nowhere.
“It was released three times and kept flopping,” Morten said.
“Things weren’t managed well in the early days.”
Though the song had failed to reach a mass audience, a pair of executives from Warner Brothers recognized a-ha’s potential.
They brought in a new producer to refine Take on Me, adding layers of synths, a coda section, and a cleaner and more soaring sound.
“During that process, I realized in a split second how to approach the song with my voice,” Morten said.
“And it had its wings.”
Then the label hired a team to create a new music video, including Steve Barron, who had just directed the music video for Michael Jackson’s smash hit, Billie Jean.
If you watched MTV in the 1980s, you know the video. If not, here’s a reminder:
That’s “what got things really moving,” said Morten.
The new version of Take on Me was released in the UK in April 1985 to little fanfare.
But in the US, the band’s innovative music video was a smash on MTV, and Take on Me began climbing the charts.
After 15 weeks on the US Billboard charts, Take on Me finally took the No. 1 spot on October 19, 1985.
The single was re-issued in the UK, and finally became a hit there, too.
While it only managed to reach No. 2 in the UK, Take on Me was an international smash and sold millions of copies.
The creative song that was rejected over and over again ended up becoming one of the biggest hits of the 1980s.
The music video for Take on Me lives on, too.
In 2020, the video joined Guns N’ Roses Sweet Child o’ Mine to become the second music video from the 1980s to reach more than one billion views on YouTube.
And it’s still great, if you ask me!
Check out this unplugged version of the song:
FUN FACT: Bunty Bailey, the woman who stars in the Take On Me video as Morten’s love interest actually became his real-life love interest for a while after filming.
BONUS: Enjoy this fun mash up of Take on Me with Harry Styles’s hit As It Was.
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Stay Curious!
-Beth
Such a powerful post! I LOVED this song and video in the 80s, right down to the big hair, even dreamed of meeting a-ha when I lived in Oslo for a year (spoiler alert: it did not happen). I had never watched it up close like this. Nice memory jog, Beth. Thank you for the deep dive!