EPISODE · Oct 15, 2025 · 31 MIN
A-ha - Take On Me
from Song Exploder · host Hrishikesh Hirway
"Take On Me" by A-ha is an iconic hit of the 1980s. It came out in October 1985 with an equally iconic music video that helped define the age of MTV. It hit #1 in the US and in countries all over the world. And it's still massively popular today. It currently has over two and a half billion streams on Spotify. So, with all of that, it's easy to imagine that this was all inevitable. But actually, the song took so many steps and missteps before it became the hit that everybody knows. I talked to Paul Waaktaar-Savoy from A-ha, who wrote the original bones of the song back when he was a teenager in Norway, years before it came out. The song actually came out and flopped TWICE in the UK, before it found a foothold in the US. So for this episode, Paul took me through the whole history of the song, and all the different versions that existed. And he told me how he and his bandmates, Magne Furuholmen and Morten Harket, pushed and pushed and persevered. "Take On Me" was their first single as a band, and it made them the most successful Norwegian pop group of all time.For more info, visit songexploder.net/a-ha.
What this episode covers
"Take On Me" by A-ha is an iconic hit of the 1980s. It came out in October 1985 with an equally iconic music video that helped define the age of MTV. It hit #1 in the US and in countries all over the world. And it's still massively popular today. It currently has over two and a half billion streams on Spotify. So, with all of that, it's easy to imagine that this was all inevitable. But actually, the song took so many steps and missteps before it became the hit that everybody knows. I talked to Paul Waaktaar-Savoy from A-ha, who wrote the original bones of the song back when he was a teenager in Norway, years before it came out. The song actually came out and flopped TWICE in the UK, before it found a foothold in the US. So for this episode, Paul took me through the whole history of the song, and all the different versions that existed. And he told me how he and his bandmates, Magne Furuholmen and Morten Harket, pushed and pushed and persevered. "Take On Me" was their first single as a band, and it made them the most successful Norwegian pop group of all time. For more info, visit songexploder.net/a-ha.
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A-ha - Take On Me
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