This is following an article I wrote last year, when it was revealed that A-ha were going to call it quits after the tour this year. This is still the case. They have just released their last video for their final single, 'Butterfly, Butterfly'. I'm not always sentimental, but it's a moving promo, directed by Steve Barron, who directed the classic clips for Take on Me and The Sun Always Shines on TV. Here it is:
A-ha Butterfly, Butterfly (The Last Hurrah)
A-ha
Let's be clear here. A-ha are the business. It's no secret that journalists are lazy. They like to cut corners. Less serious ones will happily quote and paraphrase from the public domain. Therefore you may have read articles which can't resist mentioning Morten Harket's chiseled cheek bones, or how are they have been championed by Keane and Coldplay, which depending on your point of view may be not too flattering.
Maybe one truism, is that they have been misunderstood, by a music industry and a public that in the 1980s went along with the hype and the teeny-bopper label. To an extent they went along with it for a few months, curious, amused, but when it was the cover of Rolling Stone magazine or Q they wanted to make, the likes of Smash Hits and Just Seventeen beckoned. It's hard to understand, looking back, what their popular fans of screaming adolescent girls saw in their music with songs about alienation, existential angst, identity and loneliness. What the more discerning fan heard was something deeper than the simplified europop tag. This wasn't a band who were manufactured. Most of the songs in the early days were written and produced by Pal Waakaatar (now known as Paul Waakatar-Savoy) From the 1980s albums 'Hunting High and Low', 'Scoundrel Days' and 'Stay on these Roads' there was only actually a handful of songs that was close to the unashamed teen pop format.
I wrote a short review of 'Scoundrel Days' recently, in appraisal of their recent album remasters. This is what it says;
'Scoundrel Days' was the album I got for Christmas which I unwrapped about a month early to listen to it. This, their sophmore album, continues and develops the sound and themes about escape and alienation from 'Hunting High and Low'. The album begins with a murder (Scoundrel Days) and ends with a prison sentence (Soft Rains of April). Not the subject you'd normally associate with so called teeny boppers. But A-ha aren't and never were teeny boppers. You'd be hard pressed to find songs about death, alienation, betrayal and adjustment disorder in the back catalogue of Duran Duran or Wham! With A-ha you're dealing with a different beast altogether, one that draws its influence from the work of Greig, Munch and Ibsen as much as The Beatles. For me, 'I've Been Losing you' (yet another song about murder perhaps, of madness?) is one of many highlights, signalling a rawer edge to A-ha's soud, a glimpse into A-ha's future, whilst still provoking an emotional response from a heartbreaking and beautiful refrain.
Further still 'Manhattan Skyline's' 'I don't want to fall again/I don't want to know this pain' is not the kind of platitude you get in most pop songs. It comes from the heart, from Waakatar-Savoy's youth, the pain of a broken down relationship. 'I'm trying to keep my newspaper dry' has to be one of the most heartbreaking lyrics of all time. My personal highlights include 'October' and 'the Weight of the wind', songs about loss, escape, dislocation and paralysis in a strange envioronment surrounded by strangers, together but yet alone. These seems to be recurring themes in A-ha's world, from 'The Blue Sky' to 'Minor Earth, Major Sky'...living inside an existence which is often unsettling, aggressive, dangerous but essentially lonely. Sometimes it isn't the world outside but the one in your head. The final track of the album, which owes some sonic debt to The Moody Blues is devastating and haunting. 'Time passing so slow...' A-ha make the world go round that little bit faster. Pain and pop music are not stances but ways of life, which A-ha have embraced and their fans have adored them for. It was always about the music and words, the sentiment, the sound. A-ha made sense to me as a 12 year old, and now as a man in his 30s because they went above and beyond what was necessary in pop/rock music with intelligent songs not just about falling in love but the human condition and our existence. Nordic, deep and beguiling.
As the years passed, and the band gained more control over their presentation and their production the serious songs about murder, dead bodies, betrayal continued only with less of that 80s sheen and with a 90s rock sensibility. It was probably after 'Crying in The Rain' that their glory supporting fans desserted them leaving the real supporters to worship them all for themselves. Ironically around this time they recorded 'Rock in Rio 2's' biggest attendence of 195,000 spectators. After a brief spell apart to pursue solo directions, they returned back to the fray with the albums 'Minor Earth, Major Sky', 'Lifelines,' 'Analogue' and the top five album 'Foot of the Mountain' (which Magne wanted to call 'Digital') It's just a shame that successive record companies and the media haven't quite got out of bed when its come to supporting the band, and maybe unfairly they'll always be remembered as that band 'with that cool animation video' mocked in Family Guy, or 'The band whose singer has chisled cheekbones'.
They still continued to be very successful in certain territories, such as native Norway (where they recently held a concert for 125,000 spectators) and Germany, the biggest market in Europe for popular music, and are still in many music fans hearts acknowledged with some kind of affection, nostalgia perhaps. But for me, their success and relevance comes down to a few basic factors:
1. They write and produce their own work which happens to be of a very high standard, musically and soundwise. Magne and Paul can really play their instruments, and each others (settle down now), and other people's. They don't pose and mime with them.
2.They are from Norway. These roots undoubtedly are relevant as they take a different, maybe darker approach to the world around them, which makes a change from the UK and US perspective, which in the main doesn't offer anything particulary unique. Their songs capture the Autumnal, fading summer mood, very much like an Ibsen for the 21st century set to music and lyrics.
3. Morten can sing. And singers are ten a penny. In a world where everyone wants to be a singer, where everyone can sing, where everyone, however, doesn't actually have their own voice but mimics old rnb singers or sounds like Green Day, Morten is best. And technically he's pretty fab. His voice is distinctive too, not in the Mark E Smith/Shaun Ryder, 'we really are fucking tone deaf' sense of the word but in the 'I am Morten. I can sing. This is me. And I'm good. I don't have to be shambolic.' Of course he is quite a prickly character, it has been said.
4.Even some of their songs have cryptic and intriguing song titles, 'The Blood that Moves the body,' 'Sycamore Leaves,', Forever Not Yours,', 'Analogue,', 'Celice', '(Seemingly) Non Stop July,' 'October', 'The Weight of the wind', 'There's never a forever thing', 'Angel in the snow', 'Locust'.
Their 2 disc compilation '25' is out soon, taking in album tracks and singles. You can also buy 'Hunting High and Low' and 'Scoundrel Days' remasters, which includes bonus discs of demos and remixes and they will come to the UK in November 2010 for their final live dates. Not many bands have the opportunity to have a clean end to their career.
