40 Fun Facts About A-ha

Which animation technique, applied to about 3,000 frames over 16 weeks, made A-ha's "Take On Me" video famous?

Rotoscoping means tracing over live-action footage frame by frame, which is why the pencil-drawn hero moves like a real person.

A-ha performed the title song for which James Bond film, the first to star Timothy Dalton as 007?

The Living Daylights nearly had Morten Harket on screen too: he was offered a small part as a henchman and turned it down, suspecting he was wanted for his fame.

Which rapper's 2013 hit "Feel This Moment", featuring Christina Aguilera, is built on the riff from A-ha's "Take On Me"?

Pitbull took the borrowed riff into the US top ten, and Morten Harket walked on as a surprise guest when the song was performed at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards.

A-ha's stripped-back acoustic 2017 version of "Take On Me" was used in which 2018 superhero film?

Deadpool 2 used the hushed version taped on the remote Norwegian island of Giske, where the band played in secrecy with phones banned from the room.

A-ha chose producer John Ratcliff's London studio for their early demos because it housed which arcade game?

Space Invaders proved a lucky draw: Ratcliff introduced the trio to his own manager, Terry Slater, and the two men went on to manage A-ha together.

Whose ballad "The Power of Love" kept A-ha's "Take On Me" at number two in the UK for three weeks?

Jennifer Rush had Britain's biggest single of the year with it, so the song that topped the American chart stalled one place short in the UK.

Which American duo first recorded "Crying in the Rain", the Carole King co-write that A-ha covered in 1990?

The Everly Brothers grew close to the band after the cover's success and presented them with a set of guitars, which A-ha went on playing.

Which computer-animated Dire Straits video beat A-ha's "Take On Me" to Video of the Year at the 1986 MTV awards?

Money for Nothing took the top prize, yet A-ha still left with eight trophies from the night, six of them for the pencil-sketch video.

Morten Harket's 20-second note on a 2000 A-ha single outlasted the famous long note in which Bill Withers song?

Lovely Day ends on an 18-second note, and Harket's 20.2 seconds on the comeback single beat it to set a European record for a top-40 pop song.

Morten Harket of A-ha co-hosted which annual international TV event when Oslo staged it in 1996?

Eurovision Song Contest viewers saw him do double duty: besides presenting with Ingvild Bryn, Harket sang the show's opening number himself.

The riff of A-ha's "Take On Me" was partly inspired by the playing of Ray Manzarek, a member of which American band?

The Doors were an early influence on the trio, and the first, punkier version of the song was written to offset a riff the teenagers feared was too pop.

A-ha recorded their 1993 album Memorial Beach at Paisley Park, the Minnesota studio complex built by which pop star?

Prince had opened the complex only six years earlier; the album made there sold poorly, and A-ha drifted into a hiatus the following year.

For a 2007 Amnesty International charity album, A-ha covered "#9 Dream", a song by which former Beatle?

John Lennon said the 1974 song came to him in a dream, and it peaked, fittingly, at number 9 on the American chart.

Which animated sitcom licensed A-ha's "Take On Me" video for a scene in its episode "Breaking Out Is Hard to Do"?

Family Guy sends Chris into the pencil-sketch world while he fetches milk; the show held the rights to the real video but redrew it to simplify production.

Which baseball team made A-ha's "Take On Me" its seventh-inning stretch song, thanks to outfielder Michael Morse?

Washington Nationals crowds took it up because Morse walked to the plate to it, and belting out the high chorus became a ballpark tradition.

Morten Harket said an early version of A-ha's "Take On Me" sounded like an advert for which chewing gum?

Juicy Fruit was his verdict on the tune when it was still called "Miss Eerie", yet he also said its keyboard riff had the character of a universal hit.

In A-ha's "Take On Me" video, the comic-book hero played by Morten Harket first appears competing in which motorsport?

Sidecar racing opens the comic that a café customer is reading, and the two rivals he beats return later as the villains who chase the couple.

Which A-ha single went one better than "Take On Me" by topping the UK chart for two weeks in January 1986?

The Sun Always Shines on TV was recorded while two of the band lay on camp beds in the studio with flu, and it won the British number one their first hit had just missed.

A-ha earned a Grammy nomination in 1986 but lost to Sade in which category?

Best New Artist went to Sade that night, but the nomination capped a debut year in which the trio had also topped the American singles chart.

Which director, who made Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" video, also directed A-ha's "Take On Me" video?

Steve Barron saw both videos, and his clip for Toto's "Africa", pass a billion YouTube views, and the A-ha one rescued a song that had already flopped twice.

At which football stadium did A-ha draw 198,000 paying fans in 1991, a crowd that earned a Guinness World Record?

Maracanã was sold out for the band's headline night at a Rio festival, yet the music press all but ignored it, a snub the trio later called a devastating blow.

A-ha's set was cut to three songs in July 2005 at which city's edition of the Live 8 concerts?

Berlin heard only three songs: Morten Harket's earpiece failed mid-set, and the long pause that followed used up the time for a fourth song the band had rehearsed.

Magne Furuholmen of A-ha formed the supergroup Apparatjik in 2008 with bassist Guy Berryman of which British band?

Coldplay's ties to the Norwegians run deep: the band's singer once introduced Furuholmen on stage as the best player of his instrument in the world.

Which British synth band's "A Question of Lust" did A-ha cover for a BBC Radio 2 session in 2009?

Depeche Mode were the 1980s act Magne Furuholmen said he felt most connected to, which explains the choice for the Dermot O'Leary show.

Which former member of the Hollies sang backing vocals on two songs from A-ha's 2005 album Analogue?

Graham Nash, one of the band's well-known admirers, lent his harmonies to "Over the Treetops" and "Cosy Prisons".

Which veteran film composer clashed with A-ha while co-writing and producing their James Bond theme song?

John Barry found the band exhausting and they found him hard to like, yet Pål Waaktaar admitted his string arrangement made the track sound like Bond.

Which hitmaker behind Britney Spears's debut single reworked A-ha's "Analogue" into a UK top-ten hit?

Max Martin was brought in to give the song a catchier chorus and plainer lyrics, and it became the band's first British top-ten single since 1988.

In 2012 all three members of A-ha were knighted by Norway's king with which royal honour for services to music?

Order of St. Olav knighthoods reward distinguished service to the country, and King Harald honoured the trio two years after their farewell tour.

In A-ha's "Take On Me" video, one of the two villains smashes the looking glass with which tool?

Pipe wrench in hand, the racers trap the woman inside the comic, so the hero has to tear a hole in a paper wall to send her home.

Which comeback single did Paul Waaktaar-Savoy write in a hurry for A-ha's 1998 Nobel Peace Prize Concert appearance?

Summer Moved On was meant for a one-off reunion, but the performance led to a new album and the song became a radio number one across much of Europe.

Which 1988 ballad did A-ha perform at Norway's national memorial service for the victims of the 2011 attacks?

Stay on These Roads brought the trio back on stage eight months after their farewell concerts, and all three members had a hand in writing it.

Which 1986 A-ha single, a UK top-five hit, was the band's last entry on the US Billboard Hot 100?

Cry Wolf borrowed its theme from the fable of the boy who raised false alarms, and its video was shot at a château in Burgundy.

Which 2009 A-ha single served as the official anthem of that year's World Championships in Athletics?

Foot of the Mountain was finished only the night before its radio premiere, and it gave the band their best German chart placing since their 1985 breakthrough.

Which 2015 studio album marked A-ha's reunion, five years after the trio's farewell tour?

Cast in Steel grew out of an invitation to play a festival's 30th anniversary, and the comeback was planned as a two-year reunion.

Pål Waaktaar and Magne Furuholmen self-financed the 1980 album Fakkeltog in which Oslo band that came before A-ha?

Bridges once played a show with Morten Harket in the audience, and a song from that album resurfaced decades later in A-ha's acoustic set.

A-ha wrote "Shapes That Go Together" as the official song of which 1994 sporting event in Lillehammer?

Winter Paralympics organisers got their song shortly after the band had played two concerts during the Olympics in the same town.

Magne Furuholmen of A-ha coached the winning singer on the Norwegian edition of which TV talent show in 2012?

The Voice gave Furuholmen a second job, since he then produced the debut album of his winning protégé himself.

Which producer re-recorded "Take On Me" for A-ha's debut album, giving the hit version its cleaner, soaring sound?

Alan Tarney replaced the earlier quick fade-out with a proper ending, though even his version flopped in Britain until the animated video arrived.

Morten Harket and Magne Furuholmen of A-ha pioneered electric cars in Norway by importing which converted Fiat model?

Panda at the ready, the pair drove around until their electric runabout became local folklore, and a climate scientist has traced Norway's love of electric cars to that stunt.

Which HBO drama used A-ha's "Take On Me" as Ellie discovers an escalator in the episode "Left Behind"?

The Last of Us sent the song to the top of Billboard's Top TV Songs chart for that month, almost four decades after its release.