Today, I'm wrapping up my 80's adventures with a-ha. They were a band that hit hard in 1985 with their iconic tune, Take On Me, but then quickly fell off my radar. Up until now, I hadn't heard anything beyond that respective album and their James Bond contribution. Now that I am, I feel like I may have missed out the first time around.
1988's Stay On These Roads matched the charts of its two predecessors, really solidifying the staying power of the band. This only makes it all the more weirder how foreign anything beyond their debut is to me. What happened that they completely disappeared in the USA?
Coming off my high from their hard rocking Manhattan Skyline track from their previous Scoundrel Days album, I was still wanting something punchier from the band. As such, I was a little bummed by the title track album starter, which was very slow paced, almost a slog to get through.
The tempo picked up a bit with The Blood That Moves The Body, which was an enjoyable track to hear, but we were still very much in synth pop land. The string style arrangements reminiscent of The Living Daylights intertwined in the tune definitely made this one stick out as a positive.
Speaking of that Bond song. While the film version was recorded with producer / composer John Barry, and considered a masterpiece as far as I'm concerned, a-ha opted to do something rather odd. When it came time to release their album, the band included their own version on the album, which is so far inferior from the film adaptation that it's like listening to a completely different song. a-ha's "solo" effort is awful. Just awful. It has nothing that made its predecessor superior.
There's apparently a lot of drama and contention between the group and Barry, suffice to say they don't appear to have gotten along. Allegedly, Duran Duran voiced the same concerns with Barry that a-ha did when recording their Bond hit, A View To A Kill.
Sales for the album would be the beginning of a steady decline in a-ha's popularity, which continued with 1990 released East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon. I can certainly see why. With the exception of a couple tracks at the beginning, it was just a very bland and blah experience. By 1993's Memorial Beach, the world had seemingly moved on from the band. Fun fact though, their '93 album was recorded at Prince's Paisley Park.
a-ha went on hiatus in 1994, but would return in 1998 to perform at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert. This kicked off a series of comeback tours, and culminated in the 2000 released Minor Earth Major Sky studio album. They would continue to release new albums through 2009, but then shocked their fans by announcing they would be disbanding. Coinciding with this announcement was the release of the compilation, The Singles: 1984–2004.
In hindsight, this could have just been a ploy to garner attention towards the greatest hits release, as a-ha would come back together in 2015 to release yet another studio album. This was followed in 2022 with their latest to date, True North. Since then, a-ha continues to tour.
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS August 8, 1981 |
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS August 8, 1987 |
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