Summary:

• Release year: 1986
• Songwriter: Mark Shreeve, Jon Astrop, and Pete Q. Harris
• Singer:Samantha Fox
• Album: Touch Me
• Duration: 3:44
• Record Location: Battery, London
• Achievements: #1 in Australia, Canada, Finland, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland, #3 in the UK and #4 in the US.

About: Take on Me by A-ha

Released on October 19th, 1984, “Take on me” is a song by Norwegian synth-pop band A-ha, recorded for the album “Hunting high and low”. Produced by John Ratcliff and Alan Tarney. It reached #1 song on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1985, the only one in the top 100 by the band in the US and the 1st Norwegian band to achieve such result. It also reached #2 in the UK.

A-ha were a trio formed by Morten Harket (vocals), Pal Waaktaar (guitar) and Mags Furuholmen (keyboards). Furuholmen chose the name A-ha as it was an internationally recognizable exclamation, revealing the high ambitions of the group.

“Take on me” was initially written in 1982 as “Lesson one”, released in 1983, but although it hit #3 in their native Norway, it was a flop everywhere else, especially in the UK. In the midst of frustrating times, A-ha got a break when enough of the right people in the industry saw the band’s potential and decided to invest heavily on them. So the song was re-recorded, tweaked, more energy and instrumentation were added (with a tempo of 169 BPM), the definitive video was shot and this time, it got heavily promoted (with a US bias) and success was achieved all over. #2 in the UK this time, and #1 in the US, where the video, which was made with an appealing technique of experimental animation, catapulted the song to the top of the charts. “Take on me” reached #1 in other 27 countries including Austria, Belgium, Greece, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland. #2 was also reached in Canada, Denmark and Ireland, while #3 in France, #4 in Finland, #7 in New Zealand and South Africa, only #11 in Spain.

The video, reveals how creative and ambitious music videos became in the middle of the 80s, with the black and white part-animated character played by Morten Harket, snatches a girl, played by actress Bunty Bailey, into an animated story in which the two fall in love and are harassed by ill-intentioned characters. It took 6 months to complete, but also won 6 awards and 8 nominations at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, establishing a new record for the event, previously held by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in 1983. Directed by Steve Barron, it enjoyed a very healthy budget of 100,000 pounds (over 400,000 dollars in today’s value) which was clearly to achieve something special, and it did.

The video is very well recognized. It was so impactful that it’s an established symbol of 1980s music. The shoot was in London in the then called Kim’s Cafe’, now Savoy Cafe’ (corner of Wandsworth Road and Pensbury Place, London SW8).

The animation used in the famous video, is a pencil-sketch and live-action combination called rotoscoping, already known at the beginning of the 20th century, but nicely represented, complemented and implemented with new techniques and technology.

The girl in the video, Bunty Bailey, became Morten Harket’s girlfriend for a few years after meeting during the video shoot.

The video posted above is a 4k video restoration of the original (which was actually a 2nd version of a much different prior one).