a-ha

With their chiseled Scandinavian good looks and a few pop hooks, a-ha is a Norwegian electropop answer to Duran Duran, as mid-'80s teen idols of the music-video age. It might be argued that Steve Barron, who directed the video for the trio's "Take On Me," and Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger, who animated the clip, were as important to a-ha's American success as the band members themselves.

A-ha's three members had played in such Scandinavian bands as Spider Empire, Soldier Blue, and Bridges before coming together in the early ’80s and moving together to London. The group's first single, “Take On Me” (#1, 1985), got heavy MTV play with its video clip, which blended live action and animation in a romantic adventure starring the handsome Harket as a comic-book hero who comes to life and pulls an unsuspecting young woman into the action. The song propelled Hunting High and Low to #15. A-ha would score a few more hits - including “The Sun Also Shines on TV” (#20, 1985) and “Cry Wolf” (#50, 1987) - but its album sales steadily decreased, and East of the Sun and Memorial Beach failed to chart at all. A-ha remained a steady draw internationally, however, especially in Latin America, where it topped the singles charts no fewer than 14 times, and in 1991 played for record-breaking crowds at Brazil’s Rock in Rio concert. In 1987 a-ha wrote and recorded the theme song for the James Bond film The Living Daylights. In 1995 Harket began a solo career with Wild Seed (Vogts Villa followed a year later), while Waaktaar and his wife, Lauren Savoy, formed the band Savoy, who released Mary Is Coming (1996) and Lackluster Me (1997). With “Take On Me” placing high atop such lists as MTV’s 100 Greatest Music Videos Ever, Harket, Furuholman, and Waaktaar reconvened to greet the new millennium with a new Europe-only a-ha album, Minor Earth, Major Sky.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)