Oct 19th in Pop History
On this day, October 19th in…
• 1985 - A synthpop group called a-ha became the first Norwegian band to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart when Take on Me went to # 1 on this date.
a-ha achieved their biggest success with their debut album, Hunting High and Low in 1985. That album peaked at number one in their native country Norway, number 2 in the UK, and number 15 on the US Billboard album chart; yielded two international number-one singles: Take On Me, and The Sun Always Shines on TV. In the UK, Hunting High and Low continued its chart success into the following year, becoming one of the best-selling albums of 1986.
The band has released ten studio albums, several compilations and four live albums. The band has sold more than 55 million records. According to the LA Times, they got a record deal in England, and Take on Me was released in October 1984, selling only 300 copies. A few months later, now remixed, the song flopped again. The world seemed to be saying no to a-ha, but the band had a guardian angel.
Jeff Ayeroff, a legendary Warner Bros. Records executive, was visiting England when a British colleague played him Take on Me. It reminded Ayeroff of his favorite singer, Roy Orbison. Then, Ayeroff saw a picture of the group. “It was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Do people actually look like this?’ Morten Harket was one of the best-looking men in the world.”
Ayeroff paired video director Steve Barron with animator Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger, gave them a lot of money and told them not to come back until they’d made something brilliant. The video took three months and was worth the wait: The world saw Morten Harket’s heroic cheekbones and swooned. In fall 1985, eight years after Furuholmen wrote the central riff, Take on Me, the record, went No. 1 in 27 countries.
When they were nominated for 11 MTV Video Music Awards in 1986, they skipped the ceremony, and instead played a 2,200-seat Houston theater. But they won eight VMAs that night, including new artist and direction in a video!
I hope you’ll take a moment to listen below. This is such a GREAT record.
Here is the official video that was ever-present on MTV in 1985: a-ha with their performance of Take On Me:
Here is a video of the band a-ha with a live performance of Take On Me:
a-ha on Spotify:
Also, on this day, October 19th, in…
• 1958 - Brenda Lee records "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree.” She was just 13. The song will be released as a single but will fail to chart in either 1958 or 1959. When it was re-released in 1960 it rose to # 14 and has since become a Christmas standard, being ranked at # 4 in the Top 10 All Time Christmas Songs
• 1967 - The Beatles record Hello Goodbye
Also, on this day in…
• 1997 - Vince Gill honors John Denver with a performance of Take Me Home Country Roads, at the Grand Ole Opry. Denver died a week earlier in a plane crash
• 2010 - Elton John described today's songwriters as "pretty awful", Pop music as "uninspiring" and talent shows like American Idol as "boring" in an interview with Britain's Radio Times magazine
