Yellow Magic Orchestra gets my eternal gratitude for helping me not only get into technopop as it was used throughout music in Japan, but also into the synthpop and New Wave of bands outside of the nation of my ancestry during the 1980s.
One of those showstopper synthpop songs and frankly one of the legendary 80s songs, period, is A-ha's "Take On Me". Released three times with the latest being in September 1985, this Norwegian band came up with a melody that has been catchier than the most effective flypaper and is also notable for vocalist Morten Harket's ionosphere-scratching falsetto. It also didn't hurt that the song came with a music video that is still causing jaws to drop almost forty years later. The lines between reality and comic books got a whole lot more diaphanous as a result. It's not surprising that "...the video won six awards and was nominated for two others at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards." according to Wikipedia.
In the past few years, it looks like trailers for movies and television have been grazing on the pop music of yesteryear for songs to add that oomph. As such, we've had Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" being woven into the next "Ant-Man" sequel and New Order's "Blue Monday" getting into "Wonder Woman 1984", and in the past few months, "Take On Me" has had its role in the trailers for "The Last of Us".
Of course, the amazing pencil-drawn animation sequence from the video wasn't going to be left alone. It's been used in "Family Guy".
I also remember that the famous NBC cop show "Hill Street Blues" used the technique for one of their commercials. It's probably been used in other commercials that I have yet to see, and as I did for the "Hill Street Blues" ad, I would start singing out the synth intro for "Take On Me".
The song reached No. 2 in Canada whereas in the States, it hit No. 1. Incidentally, I was also a big fan of the extended remix whenever it came out on the radio dance shows on Saturday night. That synth bass was really rocking!
Now, what was hitting the Top 10 of Oricon in September 1985? We have Nos. 1, 3 and 5.
1. Anzen Chitai -- Kanashimi ni Sayonara （悲しみにさよなら）
3. Sonoko Kawai -- Namida no Jasmine Love（涙の茉莉花LOVE）
5. C-C-B -- Lucky Chance wo Mou Ichido （Lucky Chanceをもう一度）
Fireminer here. Never could I imagine the day Take On Me appear on KKP. And that Sonoko's song really reminds me of those Chinese cabaret singers wearing cheongsam that appeared a lot in movies about Hong Kong in the 1930s-1940s.
ReplyDeleteHello, Fireminer. With the ROY articles, I've been able to write about the non-Japanese songs that I've also loved for years, so "Take On Me" was going to get onto the blog at some point. There are still a lot of 80s stuff to get up here on Thursdays.
DeleteI find that during the 80s, there were quite a few Japanese songs that had that Asian cabaret feeling such as Kazuhiro Nishimatsu's "Night of Blue Roses" on his 1985 "Bouekifu Monogatari" album.
https://kayokyokuplus.blogspot.com/2018/09/kazuhiro-nishimatsu-bouekifu-monogatari.html
One of the most underrated bands of the 80s, including, inexplicably, by themselves. Every (English language) music journalist covering them talks about Take On Me, Harket's perfect cheekbones, before wondering why no one talks about their music which deserves better than to be dismissed as boyband pop. They'd rather talk about anything but their music, and regularly reform just to show that they could, before splitting up again for a few years because they'd rather make music than live it. They have no respect for their Bond theme (and neither did John Barry), despite most Bond fans and music critics deeming that it was much better than their creators gave credit for.
ReplyDeleteHarket's not just capable of high notes. IIRC he also holds the record for the longest note in a European single that made an impact in the charts. IMHO every bit as talented as the much more feted Freddie Mercury.
Summer moved On, Nobel Prize concert 1998
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQt44aBx8mc
Hello, Jim. I had a feeling that A-Ha should have been bigger than they were although I did enjoy a lot of their output including "The Living Daylights".
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