"Take on Me," A-ha

This weekend marks the 30^th anniversary of the launch of MTV, the channel that ushered in a new generation of artists that, in earlier times, would have struggled to succeed. High-concept, visually-appealing videos were scarce in the station’s early days, so artists who were fortunate enough to produce such videos were put into heavy rotation.  No artist benefited more from this than A-ha with their 1985 number 1 hit, “Take On Me.”  (Click here for the official version, which could not be embedded in this post.)

“Take on Me” tells the now-famous tale of a woman (Bunty Bailey) who is literally drawn to – and into – the adventures of a dashing motorcycle racer, played by A-ha frontman Morten Harket.  All is well until his opponents find and chase him, forcing the woman to find safety back in the real world.  Desperate to learn his fate, she takes the comic book back home and continues reading. As she reaches the book’s end, her hero appears in the hallway, throwing himself against the walls until he becomes a real person.  (Fiction would soon become reality: Bailey and Harket briefly dated following the filming of the video.)    

In hindsight, the plot sounds a bit overdramatic.  The execution, however, was flawless, thanks to a generous budget and the painstaking animation work of Mike Patterson.  Using the rotoscope technique, Patterson applied his black-and-white, comic book drawing style to the video’s live-action footage.  It would take Patterson four months and 3,000 drawings to produce the final product, which video director Steve Barron based on a comic book about motorcyclists he read as a child. 

Interestingly enough, the “Take on Me” we know today is not its original format.  The band had recorded another version in 1984 that failed to chart, and its accompanying video – a low-budget feature that simply showed the band performing – also failed to attract notice.  Indeed, had these been successful, it’s possible that we would have never seen or heard the second versions of “Take On Me” that have become milestones in both popular music and the music video genre.

* * *

Though “Take on Me” was the peak of A-ha’s success in the United States, it was just the beginning of the group’s international success.  Together for nearly three decades, the group is estimated to have sold at least 35 million albums worldwide (and many more singles).  In April, the group released Ending on a High Note, a DVD compilation of their two farewell concerts performed and recorded in Oslo, Norway.