Hunting High, Hunting Low, a-ha! Found it!
June 1, 2020 9:50 PM   Subscribe

 
OMG, I actually have an appropriate place to link the Andrew Huang cover of 'The Sun Always Shines on TV!'

It's one of my favorite most YouTubey YouTube videos.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:58 PM on June 1, 2020 [4 favorites]


As a barely-teen boy at the time, THAT video, along with Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart video -- oh, and Elton John's I'm Still Standing video -- helped me realized that I wasn't straight.
posted by myfavoriteband at 10:08 PM on June 1, 2020 [5 favorites]


mafavoriteband: my self now is offering you now a hug, and my self now is also offering you back then a hug. Your comment made me go totally :D
posted by hippybear at 10:11 PM on June 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


AC Newman's take on Take On Me is well worth a listen.

you may recognize him from the New Pornographers. A man who never had a problem with a more or less perfect pop song
posted by philip-random at 11:11 PM on June 1, 2020 [4 favorites]


The Sun Always Shines on TV is a solid tune.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:45 PM on June 1, 2020 [5 favorites]


I see what you did there, with this post, and approve fully.
posted by andreaazure at 12:09 AM on June 2, 2020


The only version of Take On Me I'll listen to anymore is K.K. Slider's.
posted by darksasami at 12:26 AM on June 2, 2020 [3 favorites]


the hood internet's 1985 mashup :P
posted by kliuless at 1:59 AM on June 2, 2020


I still listen to this album at least once a year. All killer, no filler. Every song is memorable and the production is peak 80s sounding . Train of Thought is one of my faves .
posted by freecellwizard at 4:16 AM on June 2, 2020 [2 favorites]




My big sister had this album on tape back in the day and had at least one poster of Morten Harket (the lead singer) in her room. I was always pretty fond of The Sun Always Shines On TV as a song.

Thanks for the lovely nostalgia trip, hippybear.
posted by BuxtonTheRed at 6:46 AM on June 2, 2020


Jason Lytle of Grandaddy is a long-time fan of a-ha, believe it or not
posted by Shatner's Bassoon at 6:58 AM on June 2, 2020


I've always felt like Blue Sky packs a lot of punch into such a short lyric

I'm older than my looks
And younger than my years
I'm too young to take on my deepest fears
I used to be confused
But now I just don't know
Since you left I've been watching
Blue skies come and go

posted by dnash at 7:43 AM on June 2, 2020 [2 favorites]


Can we nominate hippybear for some sort of MeFi MVP award for this running series of posts? I swear to God this is just about the only thing keeping me from boiling, raging insanity these days.
posted by martin q blank at 7:48 AM on June 2, 2020 [12 favorites]


For anyone who doesn't know, 'take on me' is a literal translation for 'touch me' in Norwegian.

A-haaaa ; )
posted by widdershins at 7:57 AM on June 2, 2020 [11 favorites]


Wow, this is pretty amazing! I went to high school with AC Newman, and one of the most vivid conversations I ever had with him was about that very tune. Glad to see it and the original here.
posted by northtwilight at 8:30 AM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]


While I like the original Take On Me a lot, I love the reggae ukulele version.
posted by MtDewd at 9:09 AM on June 2, 2020




Sorry for the plug, but I must ashamedly admit I lived through Take On Me and The Living Daylights without noticing and only really paid attention to a-ha a few years ago after a friend of mine used Hunting High and Low as the soundtrack for a horror compilation (on YT) he created for fun.
posted by Captain Fetid at 11:21 AM on June 2, 2020


This is such a good album, which I often forget because Hunting High And Low is my go-to.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:30 PM on June 2, 2020


Take On Me is very likely my favorite song. It's certainly my Animal Crossing island song. There's the scream-singing cover. But I think that the unplugged version is the best. It's been a while since I've listed to the rest, but I do recall liking it so I guess I know what to pull out this evening.
posted by neilbert at 1:16 PM on June 2, 2020 [5 favorites]


I literally played the cassette version of this album until it unspooled itself.

Even though it's considered a sophomore slump, I love the follow up album Scoundrel Days almost as much.
posted by Eikonaut at 1:20 PM on June 2, 2020 [2 favorites]


Even though it's considered a sophomore slump, I love the follow up album Scoundrel Days almost as much.

Yes! I was in high school when Scoundrel Days came out, and it was one of my most-listened-to albums for many years afterward. I still have those songs embedded in my brain.

A-ha were a much better band than they ever got credit for.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:24 PM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]


One of my favorite bands and videos. Take On Me is like a time machine that transports me back to the 80s. I can almost smell the mousse and the Member's Only jackets.

But I really came here to link to this related commercial which is excellent.
posted by ensign_ricky at 2:02 PM on June 2, 2020


My poor brain (which has had a very long week) meant Scoundrel Days in my comment above. I still listen to it frequently.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:49 PM on June 2, 2020


Yes, thanks hippybear. I was 15/16 in 1985 and CDs were just on the rise. Pretty much every album you’ve profiled was ubiquitous in my world.

There is just a thing as too much A-ha: one of my friend really loved the sun always shines on tv, and manually dubbed a 90 minute cassette (both sides) of the same track over and over. Probably TDK.
posted by freecellwizard at 3:13 PM on June 2, 2020


Todd In The Shadows started his entire "One Hit Wonderland" series with Take On Me.
posted by dannyboybell at 3:36 PM on June 2, 2020


Came to rec the MTV Unplugged version, but neilbert got it first!

I'm always annoyed when "Take On Me" shows up on "One-Hit Wonders" lists, because the whole album was amazing and there were several other hits.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:31 PM on June 2, 2020


Like, a-ha is a still active band. According to the band's website, they had an anniversary tour for this album planned for this summer. Their most recent album was in 2015.
posted by hippybear at 6:56 PM on June 2, 2020


My wife is a big a-ha fan and in 2010 we did a road trip to L. A. to see them perform at Club Nokia during their "Ending on a High Note" tour. Before the concert, we had dinner downtown and a party walks by our table that included Rob Reiner, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Christopher Guest. We could overhear them talking about going to the Nokia after dinner.

My wife was so excited to know they were all a-ha fans, she wanted to go over to their table and talk to them but I stopped her. Later when we got to the venue, we discovered Club Nokia is beside the Nokia Theater where Ricky Gervais was performing to a star studded audience.
posted by praiseb at 7:07 PM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]


Thank you SO MUCH for shedding light on this amazing album and band. This album singlehandedly got me through high school in a tiny hick town, and I wore out two cassettes of it, walking in the woods with my knockoff walkman. I've got tickets to see them perform it live start-to-finish in LA later this year, and am hoping against hope that the show will go on and the world will be a better place by then. I've waited my whole life to see them live! (Honorable mention to those who also shouted out Scoundrel Days, which I rank a little higher than this one.)
posted by jhope71 at 9:48 PM on June 3, 2020 [1 favorite]


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