A-ha - Take On Me

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh Hirway.

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When I was a kid, the first song where I ever thought, this is my favorite song, was Take On Me by Aha.

Looking at it now, it's like, of course that was your favorite song.

It is an undeniable, iconic hit of the 1980s.

It came out in October 1985 with an equally iconic music video that helped define the age of MTV.

It hit number one in the US and in countries all over the world, and it's still massively popular today.

It currently has over two and a half billion streams on Spotify.

So with all of that, it's easy to imagine that this was all inevitable.

But actually, the song took so many steps and missteps before it became the hit that everybody knows.

I talked to Paul Wochter Savoy from AHA, who wrote the original bones of the song back when he was a teenager in Norway, years before it came out.

The song actually came out and flopped twice in the UK before it found a foothold in the US.

So for this episode, Paul took me through the whole history of the song and all the different versions that existed.

And he told me how he and his bandmates, Magna Froholman and and Morton Harket, pushed and pushed and persevered.

Take On Me was their first single as a band, and it made them the most successful Norwegian pop group of all time.

I am Paul Voctor Savoy, which is a mouthful.

AHA has three members, Magna Fuhrer Holman, who plays keyboards, Morton Harkett on lead voice, and myself, Paul Wakta Savoy, on guitar.

You and Magna started playing music together years before AHA actually began, is that right?

Yeah, he lived down the street from me when we were like 12 or something.

So we've been in the band for a long time.

We had made a pact at fifteen or fourteen that we were gonna go to England and try to get a record deal.

I mean Norway back then was really

I think they played one hour of pop music a week on the radio.

It was very limited exposure to anything.

So we just knew that if we were gonna try to get a career out of this, we had to leave Norway, even though no one had done that before.

And it was sort of like a laughable thing to say.

But we, you know, at the same time, we thought that would be an amazing adventure.

And the two of you were in a band together in high school called Bridges?

Yeah, we did two albums with Bridges.

But Bridges was sort of very introverted.

Lots of songs that everybody said, well, I have to hear it 20 times before I get it.

And Bridges sort of disintegrated, which was me and Magnet left.

But I think as we got closer to going to England, we started to get the urge like, well, we gotta have some songs that really sort of you can get with the first couple of listens.

So we were definitely feeling that, you know, we had to sort of make it a little bit easier on people, on the poor listener.

We had a rehearsal space in a kindergarten up the road and it was done on a four track.

The verse came to me on acoustic guitar as I always wrote on.

And then, taking that to Mangna, we sort of played it around, just the two of us.

He came up with a keyboard riff.

Maybe

I play guitar, Magna play keyboards, I play bass, and there's Magna's neighbor there singing loud backing vocals and the Breachers drummer.

And I had a sort of a throwaway chorus.

I almost hated it.

It sort of went around itself in a four-bar loop and you couldn't get out of it.

And it's just sort of like annoying.

That song was called Missyery, is that right?

Yeah.

Where did that name come from?

That was, I mean, it's embarrassing, but I probably were inspired by like Aladdin Saiyan by Bowie, which is Alad Insane.

So I wanted to do my misery miss Eerie.

It's like one of those teenage overreach.

And so how did Morton end up joining the band?

Well, Morton first heard us when we played a show in his school.

And he was a fan, one of my, maybe the only fan we had.

So he was always interested in doing something with us.

He just thought we needed a better vocalist, so not me, in other words.

You know, Morton had an amazing voice.

Funny, first time I heard him, when we sort of auditioned him, he was playing in a blues band and he just had a show the day before.

So his voice was like

so raspy, like a

Joe Cocker type of thing.

It was like completely busted.

So I thought, like, well, that's cool.

Let's go for this guy.

The next time I heard him, I was like,

you know, sound like an angel.

But he could do so much with his voice.

And that really changed my writing because before that I would be writing to my own voice.

So I had to be sort of limiting the octaves.

But with Morten, it's like writing for a totally different instrument.

So it was very inspiring.

And just from the get-go, he was such a fan of that song, especially the riff.

He was just like, that was it.

And then my parents had a little cabin outside of Oslo in the forest.

So we borrowed that four-track recorder and try to come up with a demo tape that we can present when we go to England.

Besides Morton joining the band, were there other ways that you were changing things up?

Instead of guitars, we replaced it with the synth because that was really what was happening and we wanted to be part of the new sort of sound.

So, the first version we did with AHA with Morton

was called lesson one.

It was a totally new lyric and new approach.

You can still sort of hear the DNA of the original chorus that you said you didn't like in this chorus.

Did you still also not like this one?

It was like a sugar rush.

It was too kind of bubbly and it didn't really give you goosebumps.

It was catchy, but it didn't really grab you in the way that I like a song to do.

It has to have a more like a

you got to feel that sort of spine tingling.

So this is October, November 1982?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

What happened next after you finished recording in the cabin?

Then we decided, okay, that's it.

Now we have eight songs.

We got a cassette.

So now we can go to England and we can start doing the rounds, you know, record companies and stuff like that.

It's one thing to say, we're going to move to England and start a music career there.

But I'm just curious, How do you actually figure out how to move to England and even get started?

We thought it would be a lot easier than it turned out to be, let's put it that way.

We booked this sort of package tour.

Is that what you do?

Like, we didn't do the return flight.

We just went to England because that was the cheapest we could get.

And then it was like, okay, what do we do now?

You know, so we knew nothing.

We knew no one.

We bought like a Melody Maker or Music Express.

These are music magazines.

Yeah, back in the day.

They're probably gone now.

But, you know, there'll be some ads there and stuff like that.

But it was very hard to actually figure out how do we do this, how do we get through the reception at any record company?

You know, you just can't, you know.

It was very inspiring too, though.

Coming to England, you could, for the first time in our life, suddenly you have pop music coming out of every shop, every cab, every, you know, it was just everywhere.

Going to places like Hamden Palace, which was like a really cool club.

So you did sort of want to compete at that level.

And it took us about two weeks to realize that demo sounded pretty thin and not really hip enough.

So after about a few months we did the last money we have and booked two or three days in this studio.

I think we recorded like four songs, not Tech On Me, but four other songs.

And as luck had it, the owner of that studio loved the demo, John Ratcliffe.

And he was signed to EMI and his A ⁇ R guy, Terry Slater,

had quit EMI and he looked for a a band to manage.

So they became my managers.

Now how did that change things for you guys?

You know, for the next couple of years, we were able to use the downtime of that studio from four in the morning till the new session came in at 10 next day.

So we'd be sitting around there like tired and ready to keel over waiting for that band to get finished and then hop in and use those hours to do a new song.

They had a drum machine And I'm terrible with every machine and every sort of software I ever made, but the Lind drum, I just took to it.

So we would just sort of lay down the drums first, imagining what the rest of the track would be.

Is this something that you made in John's studio then?

Yeah, this is Rendezvous Studios, A-track.

And Magna had a, you know, I hear that.

From there on in, that became really part of the groove.

But you can see we're trying to figuring out what the bass is doing.

And my bass drum patterns is sort of trying to find the right

thing.

the song is pretty much sketched out at that point

but the chorus was not happening and then Terry said he had worked a lot with Queen and all these different artists and he would say like well whatever you got a falsetto you have a hit falsetto you have a hit that was one of his things and I thought like well hell we got the best freaking falsetto singer right here he can sing super low he can sing super high and where most people have like a sort of whispery sort of weakish falsetto he can't really do that the way he does falsetto is like full on

it's like a trumpet but I don't really love when that sort of money notes coming straight here comes the chorus and everybody goes up and you know so I never really liked that kind of songwriting so I thought you know Morton has a really nice register so I thought, like, okay, maybe we should start it with the lowest notes and then bring it up to the falsetto where you can guarantee to get a hit.

And take on me, of course.

That's the

we're Norwegian, and like people tell me, you can't say take on me, that's not real English.

You can't, you know,

but it just felt like that song couldn't be called anything else.

It just had to be, you know, Take Me On.

No, I don't like that.

In a way, we were trying to take on the world and we were just saying, like, well, take on us, you know, get a lot of this.

But this is the first time where you have a new chorus.

My conversation with Paul Walker-Savoy of AHA continues after this.

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Okay, so you had written the song, you had recorded this eight-track demo.

What was your next step?

Next for the song was to try to find a producer.

We were signed to one in the US.

Andrew Wickham was our A ⁇ R guy, and it was really his job to find suitable producers.

And the producers was very, very hard to find.

This was the 80s, where the producers was like gods.

But we didn't know one from the next, really.

In the end, they managed to get Tony Mansfield.

It was exciting, but it was also a little bit tricky because we were used to working very fast.

But he had gotten a fair light, which he loved, and everything had to go through the fairlight.

Could you explain what a fair light is and why, when you work with it, everything had to take longer

It's really a sampler mixed with an eight-track recorder and he would take the parch that we sort of insisted on taking, but he would love to also kind of make his own parch that's when we actually found the bass line for the verse

that was his thing and then little replies on the chorus that was dormant i suppose i can

take

me

on me

But on this middle 8, on this version, you would have all these kind of orchestra bangs.

I feel like the first time people got samples, that's what they did.

And it ate up a lot of time.

Five guys staring at a computer screen.

I mean, everything takes a long time.

We would never use a computer before.

So when we had seven songs instead of ten, the money was spent.

For the whole album.

Yeah.

And we were there on a tourist

visa.

So it was a lot of pressure on the whole thing, you know, recording the album and stuff like that.

It's sort of like you felt like you were on this borrowed time and the budget was spent.

You know, it was a very tense time.

You know, we tried to get it going before they really threw us out.

When we signed the deal with Warner Brothers, we ended up signing with the Warner in America.

But Warner in England, they were also interested.

And I think they were always a little bit pissed off with that, that we didn't go with the English company.

So for years, we were sort of struggling with a little bit

of them not feeling like they needed to do so much for us since we didn't sign with them.

So, when that first single came out, they threw out a few of the ugliest posters we've ever seen just around where we lived, and that was it.

There was nothing

in the English charge back then, maybe it is still like that, but it was like you had one or two weeks to get it onto the charge, so you needed to have something, a TV show, something,

and we didn't have any of that, so you couldn't expect it to just take off like that.

So, that is the first version that came out and bombed

okay so you have spent the whole budget and then this version of the song comes out in 1984 and it flops how were you able to convince anybody to give you another chance or maybe even more so i'm curious for your own sake how were you able to feel like that wasn't the end of the road for the song like it had its chance it didn't happen and that was that

yeah that's the good thing about being young you don't feel you know you just sort of brush it off your shoulders you know we were 100 confident we were like there's not a doubt in our minds so it must have been the a r guy andrew wickham he must have felt the same thing and the producer alan tarney who actually did the final version he was almost saying yes before we went for tonney mansfield And I think Andy Wickham got back to him and say, this is what they ended up with, but I know it could be better.

So he finally finally agreed to have another goal alan tarney so this is how you end up with him as the producer yes but it took some time you know it was a very touching goal because the you know they've spent this much money on the half finished album are they going to pour more money into it and risk losing more money so from norway hey no one comes from norway and makes it so it was a risk for people

but alan tarney had a little spot in between making uh this other album so we could do five days.

I remember the first day

he

had some sort of meeting or a doctor's appointment.

So

Magnet and I just put down a couple of parts to sort of sketch out the song.

And already then it just sounded like, wow, this is so much cooler.

So then it was my time to do the drum programming.

At first we just had a basic pattern, just like a straight pattern.

He had a Lindrum, but what he did have is that he didn't have a clap sound on that thing.

He had two snares.

So we ended up doing a half-time feel on the second snare.

So you would have a...

For me, it gave the whole song what I've been missing.

That's sort of a little bit of a different swagger.

Morton has all these little moves that he does in his vocals that are so awesome.

One of my favorites is this like little ramp-up that he does going into the chorus.

Today is another day to find you shying away.

This is just him just in the groove and he's just sort of like egging yourself on, you know.

Yeah.

i'll be coming for your love okay

did it feel like it was a good song to start with because we did feel

everything was very uh unsettled around us are we gonna be sent back to norway are we gonna lose this deal because we didn't finish the album i'd met my later wife she was american i don't have a penny how am i gonna keep her without any everything was up for grabs

and you just sort of yeah you're just sort of dreaming a big and hope that it'll come through

and that was what informed the lyrics to the song yeah it's sort of like it's not better to be safe than sorry

it's not better to be safe than sorry

already then it was sort of like it's such a good vibe in the track

there must have been a song that i'd heard which used a ppg wave which is that synthesizer So I asked if we could possibly rent that in for the day.

So that was a very cool scent, you know, didn't make him too well, so they always break down, but back then it was brand new and the newest thing.

One thing I didn't know was in the song until I got these stems is the acoustic guitar.

Yeah.

When we signed the deal with Warner, he took me to a guitar shop just to pick out a guitar.

Being Norwegian, I sort of picked the cheapest one there.

It was like no bottom in it.

I read later that the guy from Smith Cites got him to buy like the most awesome vintage guitar.

I should have gone that route.

But yeah, I ended up with this kind of horrible

thing.

But, you know, there's a reason for everything.

It had a very sort of high trebly sound.

So whenever you kind of mix that in with all the drum feels, it became this sort of exciting thing.

So it worked out very well.

So Tawny, Morton, and myself.

It's got a three-part harmony.

Wow, so the producer is also singing.

Yeah.

So it'll be all three of you singing on one mic?

Oh, yeah, one mic, you know.

Take

on

me

take on me take

me

up

take on me

i'll be

gone

i love the

particularly the last chorus because the two first choruses he goes to the falsetto at a sort of a later stage but on the last one he does the chest voice and that's always like the big payoff for me

After you finished recording this version, did the three of you feel differently than you had up until this point?

Yeah, this time when we mixed it with the house engineer there, Jerry Kitchingham,

I just remember walking around there while he was mixing, hearing it through like a half-open door or down the hall or whatever.

And I just feel like, God, if this isn't the hit, I don't know what is.

You know, it was like, no matter in what sort of terrible situation you were in, it still sounded great.

How much time passed between you finishing the song and then it finally coming out again?

Well, that was the thing.

I mean, we finished it very quickly in five days.

And then the English WEA, which is sort of Warner in England, released it very quickly again

and did the same kind of job as last time.

There's no plan, there's no promotional thing.

So it did the same business as the first time.

You know, it just didn't do anything.

And that's really when the people who signed us sort of stepped in and said, okay, don't do anything more with this band.

We want to launch it.

So they kind of put the foot down and said, like, you don't do anything more on a huh.

The American counterpart.

And there was a new guy on the company, Jeff Airoff.

He fell in love with the the album and the song and he had been keeping this one particular idea sort of in the back of his head there was this art film called commuter with animation so he was the one who put together that with steve baron who is the director and made the music video yeah do you remember the day it became clear to you that this version of the song released in america had become a hit it was very strange because it climbed so slow it was like they started at the bottom but of course nobody's heard about the two first attempts right because that was only in the uk yeah

but you know as we get closer to the top we would uh

get our really our hopes up and

when it went into top 100 we were ecstatic when it went into top 40 we couldn't believe it when it top 20 it was like this is just amazing i mean we were on our high you know

but of course you didn't really expect it to go to number one but then suddenly we got got the call.

I think we celebrated with a hamburger.

You know, this song for me has been an enormous hit my entire life.

But to know that it had all these different iterations,

I don't know how much that exists anymore, of giving something that much of a chance.

Yeah, I mean.

If you have something that you think it's uniquely itself, you never lose faith in it, that it could be something, something, you know.

And

so you chase it up and you give it its best shot, you know.

But of course, when it comes to hits, you have to be a little bit lucky.

If you're in the right time, in the right spot,

there's so many things against you, and it's very difficult.

But it does help to be a little bit stubborn.

And now, here is Take on Me by Aha in its entirety.

Talking away.

I don't know what to say or say it anyway.

But today isn't my day to find you, shy it away.

I'll be coming for your love, okay.

Day

gone

Sadly needless to say

I want to send it

from be stone a little way

Still learning that life is okay.

Say after me.

It's perfect to be saved in time.

Take

on

me.

Take

me

on.

I'll be

gone

in a day.

All the things that you say

alive.

Just a flame of memories away.

You're all the things I've got to remember.

You're shy and away.

I'll become you anyway.

Day

on

me.

Take only

take

me

up.

Take only

I'll be

gone.

Take only

on.

Take only

I'll take

Visit songexploder.net to learn more.

You can see some of the original pages from Paul's notebook in 1981 where they were working out the lyrics to the song as it evolved.

You'll also find links to buy or stream Take On Me, and you can watch that iconic music video.

This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Bisco.

The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo.

Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts.

You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm.

If you'd like to hear more from me about what I'm watching and listening to and thinking about, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website.

You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net/slash shirt.

I'm Rishikesh Hiraway.

Thanks for listening.

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from PRX.