A-Ha – My (life in) music lists

100 best covers: #31 A.C. Newman “Take on me”

<< #32 | #30 >>

If you’ve been following along with this list, as I know a bunch of you might be, you’d know that I came across a bunch of the covers on this list by way of compilation albums, many of which placed focus on cover songs. I had a bunch of these on my CD shelves before I started culling my collection and a good portion of them were tracked down in the mid- to late- 2000s. I was definitely on a cover kick in those days. So that would explain why I had a disc purchased from a Starbucks location on my shelves, an impulse buy*, after examining the track listing.

Starbucks actually produced a whole series of these “Sweetheart” compilations from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s. Often released just in time for Valentine’s Day on certain years, they were billed as collections of their “favourite artists” covering their own personal “favourite love songs”. The only one I bought (or even heard) was released in 2009 and was listened to in full only once or twice, though I did rip it to mp3 and keep it for the playback of certain songs that tickled my fancy.

The cover of A-Ha’s ubiquitous 80s classic “Take on me” by The New Pornographers’ frontman Carl Newman (aka A.C. Newman) was one of these.

The original version got a passing mention on these pages a couple of months ago when another single from that massive debut album, “Hunting high and low”, appeared on my Eighties best 100 list. And well, I would say that “Take on me” doesn’t really need any further introduction to anyone with a passing knowledge 80s New Wave. So I won’t go much further into the magnificent, synth pop epic A-Ha number here.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Newman likely recorded this cover around the same time and maybe during the same sessions in which he recorded his second solo album, “Get guilty”. It feels like it was recorded as a shadowy, half-remembered dream of the original. Newman strumming and banging away on his acoustic and singing into his mike, a mirror, his teenaged self smiling back at himself, singing a song he knew better than the backs of both hands, doing his best impression of Morton Harket, belting out those proclamations of love. He surrounds himself with smoky synth washes and every once in a while, that inescapable arpeggiating melody peeks out.

Such a fantastic cover. It’s very different but pays homage to the original, not trying to surpass it but to lift it up closer to the light. It’s hard to call it better but I can’t help but prefer it.

Cover:

Original:

*Yeah, those impulse racks do work on suckers like me.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #78 A-Ha “The sun always shine on T.V.” (1985)

<< #79 | #77 >>

Some people might think that I’ve gone daft with my pick for song #78 and moreover, its inclusion on this list at all, but I really do love A-Ha’s 1985 single, “The sun always shines on TV”.

To this day, A-Ha is still Norway’s biggest ever musical export and while they have enjoyed continued success in Europe, especially in their native Norway, their album releases have all but been ignored here in North America. That is, save from the explosion and excitement of their debut and most successful album, “Hunting high and low”. Indeed, no place in the world was safe from exposure to that album’s first single, the extremely popular and ubiquitous hit, “Take on me”. I admit to enjoying that single and its infinitely catchier synth melody but I have always preferred “The sun always shines on TV”, their third and less popular single. Both tracks were mainstays on AM top 40 radio and the music video channels at the time and they appeared on all the budget compilation albums that were all the rage back then. In fact, our song of focus today was on one such compilation tape called “Hit energy” that I convinced my parents to buy for me while out shopping at Zellers one night many moons ago. I played the hell out of the cassette, wearing it out in the tape deck of my bedroom’s stereo, but pretty much forgot about it until I sat down to write this post.

I think a big reason for A-Ha’s early success came from their use of the music video during the mid-80s golden age of that medium. Who doesn’t remember the video for “Take on me“, with its use of pencil-sketching animation? For those who don’t, an animated version of the lead singer, Morten Harket, pulls an unwitting, live-action woman sitting in a cafe into a comic book with him, where they are chased around the pages by two thugs. Of course, it all ends happily, until the video for “The sun always shines on TV” picks up the story, the lead singer begins to revert back to his drawing form, and runs off, leaving the heroine alone in the forest. Both of these music videos do an excellent job of putting a story to the respective songs and imbuing them with additional meaning, especially in the case of this latter song, where it only serves to add to the ironic assertion in the song’s title.

Listening to “The sun always shines on TV” now, I feel that it has aged better than its seemingly more robust older sibling. It’s an epic five minutes that starts out all calm and heavenly with synth washes and Harket’s angelic vocals but soon bursts forth with beats and flourishes that would give any Duran Duran hit a run for its money.

Original Eighties best 100 position: 78

Favourite lyric: “I fear the crazed and lonely / Looks the mirror’s sending me these days” Me too, sometimes.

Where are they now?: A-Ha has broken up and re-formed a number of times over the years, released 11 studio albums, and are still active today with their original lineup intact.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.