Forty years in the past, three Norwegian boys burst onto the pop panorama with the interminably ubiquitous hit single Take On Me. Eager to please, these unique pop creatures with wholesome translucent pores and skin and chiselled beauty have been solely too completely happy to mannequin for Jackie and Look-In magazines in an array of fetching Scandi knitwear and white muscle vests. They have been Blu-Tacked fixtures on youngsters’ partitions, to the consternation of their dad and mom.
Whereas the trio largely remained within the area of teenyboppers, on the core of A-ha was one thing darker and extra musically profound, as evidenced on their debut album Searching Excessive and Low from 1985.
Heavy rock was the primary love of guitarist and songwriter Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and keyboard participant Magne Furuholmen, whereas perma-quiffed singer Morten Harket obtained a replica of Uriah Heep’s Wonderworld when he was a teen, and it proved to be a gamechanger.
“By way of listening to Uriah Heep, I had this large revelation that I wished to do what they did, and I believed I’d go all the way in which,” Harket informed Prog in 2012. “I used to be 15 years outdated and so excited – it was a calling! I knew what I used to be going to be doing for the remainder of my life.”
The Solar At all times Shines On TV comprises lyrics that will have made Scott Walker proud
Harket’s long-lasting obsession with the Heep proved a gateway to different rock teams akin to Deep Purple, The Jimi Hendrix Expertise and Queen – Certainly, he used to sing alongside to Freddie Mercury’s components with consummate ease (although his air guitar expertise stay undocumented to this present day).
Whereas A-ha’s debut album turned out to be a great distance from Heep, the prog indicators are inside its grooves ought to anybody go searching for them. One wants look no additional than The Solar At all times Shines On TV, which hit the UK high spot in January 1986.
The five-minute, moody synthpop masterpiece with neoclassical overtones is
a great distance from the summery really feel of Take On Me, with lyrics that will have made Scott Walker proud: ’I concern the crazed and lonely seems to be the mirror’s sending me as of late,’ sings Harket dolefully, belying the shiny, completely happy picture the group created for themselves with their earlier single (their very own nickname for Take On Me was ‘The Juicy Fruit Music’).
There are indicators of their progressive rock previous elsewhere, too: And You Inform Me has a baroque pop construction that may have sounded very completely different have been it not the mid-Eighties, whereas Dwelling A Boy’s Journey Story sneaks in oboes and clarinets.
However maybe most proggy of all is the title observe itself, a track as bold as it’s dynamic, with certainly essentially the most dramatic center eight of the last decade. Seekers didn’t must hunt excessive and low for progressive indicators right here.
