Synthapop for a Late Winter Monday: A-ha's "Take On Me"

Pure 80s Synthapop for a late winter Monday morning, A-ha's classic "Take On Me" went through numerous iterations using a progressively more synthesizer-based sound, approaching liftoff on UK charts, but even then it didn't breakthrough to real commercial success until Warner Brothers produced a cutting edge music video that helped propel the tune to #1 in the US. Two videos were made for the song. The first release of "Take on Me" in 1984 includes a completely different recording, and was featured in the first video, which shows the band singing with a blue background.The second video was directed by Steve Barron, and filmed at Kim's Café and on a sound stage in London, in 1985.The video used a pencil-sketch animation / live-action combination called rotoscoping, in which the live-action footage is traced-over frame by frame to give the characters realistic movements. Approximately 3,000 frames were rotoscoped, which took 16 weeks to complete.


More on the production of the tune here

On the Norwegian pop band A-ha here

And on singer Morten Harket with his amazing vocal range here