A-ha were one of the most successful groups of the ’80s, but as singer Morten Harket once stated: “We were reluctant pop stars – virtually from day one.”
Speaking in 2009, when the Norwegian trio’s album Foot Of The Mountain was released, Harket explained: “In the ‘80s it was like we were run over by this massive train. We were not there to be pin-up idols. We knew that was part of it, but it was not the reason for doing what we were doing.
“The media was crazy, and that was one of the main reasons why we quit for some years, because we just had enough of it. We just wanted to make music.”
Article continues belowThe artistry behind A-ha’s success was neatly summarised by the group’s other two members – keyboard player and Magne Furuholmen and guitarist Paul Waaktaar-Savoy.
Furuholmen said of A-ha’s signature sound: “The key elements that first defined the band are soaring vocals, synth hooks, yearning lyrics and melodic melancholia.”
He added: “Morten has an incredible voice – one of the very few instantly recognisable voices in pop music. And that voice is most effective in a synth-based musical landscape.”
Waaktaar-Savoy, the group’s principal songwriter, said of his creative process: “Writing is for me is the hardest part but also the most enjoyable. You might spend months searching for that missing verse or the title that you think defines a song. But when it comes together, there’s no other feeling like it.”
Waaktaar-Savoy wrote the bulk of A-ha’s songs in their early days. Their breakthrough hit and best-known song Take On Me was credited to all three band members, but it was Waaktaar-Savoy alone who wrote other hits such as Hunting High And Low, I’ve Been Losing You and The Sun Always Shines On TV.
The latter song was A-ha’s first No 1 in the UK.
As Harket said: “Each song has its own identity, and you try to capture it in the best possible way. The challenge is to figure out what direction to take.
“A song like The Sun Always Shines On TV is a good example. It’s essentially a ballad but we put a pounding beat to it – it turned into a power track.”
Waaktaar-Savoy added: “It’s a happy/sad kind of thing. You can change how a song comes across to the listener, as we’ve done many times, by giving a song the opposite arrangement to what you’d expect. But songwriting is by nature introspective, and that's where I come from.”
Waaktaar-Savoy cited The Sun Always Shines On TV as an example of A-ha’s experimental and somewhat eccentric approach to recording.
He recalled: “Back then, we did all our own programming, often just firing off notes on a synthesizer that you would play for your dear life as the track went down!”
He also revealed that the first person to recognise the potential in this song was the secretary of the band’s UK record company executive Andrew Wickham. “She felt it was a hit,” Waaktaar-Savoy said. “She convinced him to make room for it [on the Hunting High And Low album].”
The recording of the song was difficult. As Waaktaar-Savoy recalled: “When we recorded it, we were really sick with influenza. Magne and Morten were lying in the studio on camping beds with high fevers.”
But the payoff was huge. Released as a single in late 1985, The Sun Always Shines On TV not only topped the UK chart but also reached No 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and made the top five in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and in the band’s home in Norway.
In 2000, U2 admitted that their hit song Beautiful Day was influenced by The Sun Always Shines On TV.
In an interview with Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, U2 bassist Adam Clayton said: “The melody line must have been lying in Bono’s subconsiousness, but this was not done intentionally.”
In 2005, when U2 performed in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, they incorporated parts of The Sun Always Shines On TV into a version of Beautiful Day.
In 2022, Morten Harket was asked about the similarity between the two songs and said diplomatically: “That’s fine.”
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