Take On Me

The Hit That Failed Twice

Almost everyone can hum the riff. Those bright, bouncing keyboard notes are among the most recognisable openings in pop history, as instantly familiar in a Manchester pub as at a California wedding. So it surprises many people to learn that "Take On Me" was, for a while, a failure. The song was released in Britain, went nowhere, was remixed and released again, and went nowhere a second time. Its record label had been patient with three young Norwegians living on very little in London, and that patience was wearing thin.

What turned it around was not a new marketing budget or a change of heart at radio. It was a music video, a pencil-sketch fantasy in which a young woman is pulled from a café into the pages of a comic book. That clip arrived at exactly the moment MTV was reshaping how the world discovered music, and it carried the song to number one in the United States in October 1985. Britain, which had twice ignored it, sent it to number two.

The story has an irony that fans love. The song itself is about someone gathering the courage to risk rejection. The band behind it did the same thing, over and over, until the world finally said yes.

Three Norwegians and a Riff Called "Juicy Fruit"

a-ha were Morten Harket, Magne Furuholmen and Pål Waaktaar-Savoy, three musicians from the Oslo area at a time when Norway was not considered a pop exporter at all. Scandinavia had given the world ABBA, but Norway itself had no real track record of international hits. Furuholmen and Waaktaar-Savoy had played together in a teenage band called Bridges, and it was there that the famous riff first appeared. In an early form it reportedly belonged to a song the friends jokingly called "The Juicy Fruit Song," because the melody reminded someone of a chewing-gum jingle.

The pair later tried the idea under the title "Miss Eerie," but it did not catch fire until Morten Harket joined. Harket had a voice that could leap from a soft, breathy murmur to a startling falsetto, and he gave the tune a human centre. Together, the three made a decision that sounds romantic now and was risky then: they moved to London in the early 1980s, convinced that if they were going to make it, it would have to be in the capital of British pop.

For UK readers, this is the cultural hook worth savouring. "Take On Me" is a Norwegian song, but it was forged in London. The band lived in cramped flats, hustled demo tapes to managers and labels, and absorbed the city's new romantic and synth-pop scene, the world of Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and the Human League. They eventually signed with Warner Bros. The first recorded version of the song, produced by Tony Mansfield, came out in 1984 and stalled. A reworked version had the same fate.

Warner, it is said, believed in the band strongly enough to try once more. The song was re-recorded with producer Alan Tarney, who tightened the arrangement, sharpened the drums and polished the riff until it gleamed. That is the version the world knows. Tarney's production made the track feel like it was running, breathless, toward something just out of reach, which is exactly what the words describe.

What the Song Is Really Saying

Strip away the sparkling synthesisers and the sky-high chorus and you find a surprisingly vulnerable lyric. The narrator is not a confident heartthrob. He is nervous, rambling and unsure of himself. He talks in circles, admitting he does not quite know what he is saying, and he keeps returning to the same proposal: let me in, give me a chance, even though this might not last.

That last part is the emotional key. He is not promising forever. He openly acknowledges that he might be gone in a day or two, that the whole thing is fragile and temporary. Rather than hiding that uncertainty, he puts it at the centre of his request. It is the voice of someone young enough to know that love can be fleeting and brave enough to want it anyway. Many listeners read it simply as a crush song, but there is also a note of self-doubt running through it, as though the singer is aware that he may be asking for too much.

The phrase in the title is worth decoding. To "take someone on" can mean to accept them, to take them into your life, but it can also mean to confront or challenge them. Some fans hear both meanings at once: the narrator is asking to be accepted while also daring the other person to deal with him, flaws and all. The English is slightly unusual, the kind of phrasing a non-native writer might arrive at, and that small strangeness is part of the charm. It sounds both direct and oddly tender.

Then there is the vocal itself, which tells the story as much as the words do. The verses are low and hurried, like someone working up their nerve. The chorus climbs and climbs until Harket hits that famous high note, held at the very top of his range. Musically, it is a leap of faith. The song does not just describe taking a risk; it performs one. Every time a karaoke singer attempts that note and either triumphs or cracks, they are reliving the same gamble the lyric is about.

The Video That Changed Everything

The music video, directed by Steve Barron, is the reason most people over a certain age remember "Take On Me" so vividly. Barron had already made videos for artists such as Michael Jackson and the Human League. For a-ha, he and the animators Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger used rotoscoping, a painstaking technique in which live-action footage is traced frame by frame to create moving drawings. Reports suggest thousands of individual sketches were needed.

The plot is simple and irresistible. A young woman, played by Bunty Bailey, is reading a comic in a café when the hero on the page, played by Harket, winks at her and reaches out his hand. She is drawn into his pencil world, where he is racing motorbikes against villains armed with wrenches. Eventually he must escape the comic himself, and in the final sequence he throws himself against the walls of the drawn world until he breaks through into reality as a flesh-and-blood man.

That climax mirrors the lyric beautifully. A man trapped in a flat, sketched existence fights his way into the real world to be with the person who noticed him. It is the song's plea, made visual. The café scenes were reportedly filmed in south London, which gives British viewers another quiet connection to a song often thought of as purely Scandinavian.

When the video reached MTV in America, it became a phenomenon. At the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards it won six awards, and it was nominated in still more categories. Even people who never bought the record could describe the clip in detail. Decades later, in early 2020, it became one of the first 1980s music videos to pass one billion views on YouTube, a remarkable feat for a clip made before the internet existed.

A Legacy That Keeps Reinventing Itself

For years, critics sometimes treated a-ha as a "one-hit wonder" in America, which always puzzled audiences in Europe, South America and especially the UK, where the band kept scoring hits. "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." topped the UK chart, and the group went on to record the theme for the 1987 James Bond film "The Living Daylights," a further link to British popular culture. In Norway, a-ha are national treasures, and they once drew an enormous audience to a concert in Rio de Janeiro that reportedly set records for a paying crowd.

Still, "Take On Me" is the song that follows them everywhere, and it has never really left the culture. It turns up in films, television comedies, video games and adverts. It has been parodied in cartoon sitcoms, sampled by rappers and covered by artists ranging from rock bands to indie singers. Weezer released a faithful cover in 2019 that introduced the song to a new generation of guitar fans. Musicians on social media regularly test themselves against the high note, and the riff has become a kind of shorthand for pure 1980s joy.

Perhaps the most moving reinvention came from the band itself. In 2017, for an MTV Unplugged project recorded in Norway, a-ha slowed "Take On Me" right down into a quiet, wistful ballad. Without the racing tempo and synths, the lyric's uncertainty came to the front. Suddenly it sounded less like a giddy crush and more like an older man looking back at the nerves of youth. Many fans said that version made them hear the words properly for the first time. The 2021 documentary "a-ha: The Movie" added further depth, showing the creative tensions within the band and how complicated it can be to live inside the shadow of one gigantic song.

Why It Still Resonates

Part of the appeal is simply sonic. The riff is joyful, the beat makes people move, and the chorus is a challenge that invites everyone to sing along and try their luck. But the deeper reason the song endures is that its feeling is universal. Almost everyone has stood at the edge of saying something important to someone, unsure if it will be welcomed, aware that it might all fall apart, and gone ahead anyway.

"Take On Me" captures that moment and wraps it in sunlight. It is honest about fear without being heavy, and it is hopeful without pretending the outcome is guaranteed. The video adds another layer that speaks loudly today: the idea of someone stuck behind a screen, reaching out, desperate to cross into the real world and make a genuine connection. In an age of phones and feeds, that image of a sketched figure breaking free feels oddly prophetic.

And then there is the story of the song itself, which gives the whole thing a happy ending the lyric does not promise. Three young men from a country with no pop pedigree moved to a foreign city, failed, tried again, failed again, and refused to give up. Their persistence paid off on a scale they could hardly have imagined. Every time the riff kicks in at a party or a stadium, it carries a little of that defiant optimism.

How to dive deeper

🎧 Immerse in the Sound

• Hunting High and Low (1985) — The debut album that houses the hit version of "Take On Me." Listen past the single to the title track and "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." and you hear a band far moodier and more ambitious than their teen-idol image suggested.
• MTV Unplugged: Summer Solstice (2017) — Recorded on a Norwegian island, this live album features the slowed, acoustic "Take On Me." It reframes the song as a reflective ballad and lets the vulnerable lyric breathe in a way the 1985 version never could.
• The 1984 Tony Mansfield version — Seek out the original first release to hear how different the song sounded before Alan Tarney rebuilt it. Comparing the two is a crash course in how much production can change a song's destiny.

📚 Follow the Story

• a-ha: The Movie (2021) — This documentary follows the band through decades of triumph and friction. It is unusually candid about songwriting credit, fame and the weight of a single era-defining hit.
• The making of the rotoscoped video — Interviews with director Steve Barron and animators Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger reveal the frame-by-frame labour behind the clip. Knowing how many drawings were needed makes the final sequence feel even more astonishing.
• Histories of early MTV — Books and features on the first decade of music television explain why a video could rescue a failed single in 1985. "Take On Me" is one of the clearest examples of that new power in action.

🌍 Visit the Places

• Oslo, Norway — The band grew up in and around the Norwegian capital, and the city remains proud of them. Walking its waterfront and quiet suburbs helps you understand how unlikely it was for a global pop hit to come from here.
• South London cafés — The video's café scenes are reportedly linked to south London. A visit to the area's old-school greasy spoons is a fun way to imagine where Bunty Bailey first met her pencil-drawn hero.
• Giske, Norway — The small island where the 2017 Unplugged sessions took place. Its windswept setting gives a sense of the hushed, reflective mood that shaped the song's later reinvention.

🎸 Experience It Yourself

• Learn the riff on keyboard — The famous opening line is a favourite first project for beginner keyboard players. Mastering its bounce teaches rhythm and finger agility, and the payoff when friends recognise it is immediate.
• Attempt the high note at karaoke — Few songs offer such a public dare. Win or crack, you will understand in your own lungs what kind of leap of faith the chorus demands.
• Watch the original video and the Unplugged performance back to back — Seeing the 1985 comic-book clip followed by the 2017 ballad reveals how one song can carry youthful thrill and grown-up nostalgia at the same time.

🎵 Listen to this song