How 'Take on Me' took MTV by storm
A song that failed three times became one of the biggest hits of the 1980s
What are the songs that you never tire of hearing?
One of mine is a-ha’s Take on Me. It’s just a fun song. It came out in 1985, but the music video somehow manages to feel much younger than its years.
As someone who grew up in the MTV Generation, I was curious how this video came to be…
So I followed my curiosity - and here’s what I discovered…
In 1985, Warner Bros. Records executive Jeff Ayeroff had a problem.
The record label was struggling to launch a new band in the UK, and asked for his help. Despite several attempts, they weren’t getting any traction with the band, a-ha, or their single, Take on Me.
The band feared they were about to be dropped from the label, but when Ayeroff heard the song, he thought it was ‘very captivating.’
Then he saw a picture of the band.
Ayeroff recognized the band’s look (especially the handsome lead singer) would be perfect for the MTV audience, and as he listened to the cassette tape of their music, he recognized a-ha’s potential.
The band had already made a music video to accompany Take on Me, but when Ayeroff saw it, he quickly identified the problem.
“It was too clean-cut. Too pat,” Ayeroff said. “It wasn’t unique enough.”
He knew that if he could create a video that was visually interesting, he could get enough airplay on MTV to make the song a hit. He had an idea for a comic book style animated video, and hired two artists to create the pencil sketch animation for the video.
Ayeroff then hired Billie Jean director Steve Barron – and gave him two things that were unusual for music videos in 1985: time and money. The budget for the Take on Me video was £100,000 (c. $150,000 US).
“We rarely got that kind of budget,” Barron said. “It was a budget designed to really do something spectacular.”
Barron began devising a story concept for the video, when he came up with an idea of a drawn hand reaching out of a comic book into the real world.
“I got goosebumps from that moment,” he said. “I thought, ‘This could be amazing.’”
The video was shot over two days in London, and the animators spent four months creating more than 2000 drawings for the video.
Ayeroff first shared the new video with small distributors, before eventually giving it to MTV in June 1985. The innovative video was a hit, and Take on Me quickly went into heavy rotation.
The video’s popularity propelled the song on the US Billboard charts, and after 15 weeks, Take on Me finally took the No. 1 spot on October 19, 1985.
The song became an international smash, and sold millions of copies.
The groundbreaking music video was nominated for eight MTV Video Music Awards in 1986 and won six, including Best Director and Viewer’s Choice. The video has remained popular for decades, and was restored and remastered in 4K resolution in 2019.
The 1985 music video is still considered one of the most innovative videos of all time, and celebrated a major milestone in 2020 when it became the second music video from the 1980s to reach over one billion views on YouTube.
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Until next time!
-Beth