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A-HA | 25 Songs. 25 Stories: Behind the Music
The
Take On Me
video made them famous. The other 200 songs are why they matter.
In the autumn of 1985, a-ha went from obscurity to ubiquity in the space of a single MTV rotation cycle. What the rotoscoped pencil animation gave them — global recognition, a generation of fans, Morten Harket's face on every magazine cover in Europe — also boxed them in. This book is about everything that happened on the other side of the frame.
25 Songs. 25 Behind the Music examines twenty-five tracks from across the full the B-side "Here I Stand and Face the Rain" that outranks most A-sides; the political charge of "Scoundrel Days" and "Manhattan Skyline"; the present-perfect grammar of "I've Been Losing You" and what it says about how Pål Waaktaar thinks about loss; the structural intelligence of "Hunting High and Low" and the note near the end that stops conversations. Each chapter is built around a specific song — its origins, its production, its place in a catalogue that runs from Hunting High and Low through Scoundrel Days , Stay on These Roads , East of the Sun, West of the Moon , Memorial Beach , and the late-career return Cast in Steel , an album that had no obligation to be as good as it was.
The book takes seriously what critics largely did that Waaktaar is one of the most distinctive pop songwriters of his generation, whose melodic intelligence was routinely overlooked because his band was filed under teen pop in 1985 and never entirely refiled. That Harket's voice — a three-octave instrument still reaching its upper register four decades on — deserved more analytical attention than it received. That Magne Furuholmen's keyboard work, his visual sensibility, and his contributions to the band's identity were systematically underacknowledged, including within the band's own press.
Alongside the familiar — "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.", "The Living Daylights", "Cry Wolf", "Summer Moved On" — are the tracks that defined the catalogue for anyone who went beyond the greatest the closing track "Soft Rains of April", the B-side that became a fan touchstone, the album track that explains why Scoundrel Days has aged better than the debut. The two disbandments and three reunions are here too, not as biography but as context for the music each separation produced.
This is a book for people who already know the difference between Minor Earth Major Sky and Lifelines . And for people who are about to find out.
This is an unofficial, independent publication. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by a-ha or their management. Part of the 25 Songs. 25 Stories series.
In the autumn of 1985, a-ha went from obscurity to ubiquity in the space of a single MTV rotation cycle. What the rotoscoped pencil animation gave them — global recognition, a generation of fans, Morten Harket's face on every magazine cover in Europe — also boxed them in. This book is about everything that happened on the other side of the frame.
25 Songs. 25 Behind the Music examines twenty-five tracks from across the full the B-side "Here I Stand and Face the Rain" that outranks most A-sides; the political charge of "Scoundrel Days" and "Manhattan Skyline"; the present-perfect grammar of "I've Been Losing You" and what it says about how Pål Waaktaar thinks about loss; the structural intelligence of "Hunting High and Low" and the note near the end that stops conversations. Each chapter is built around a specific song — its origins, its production, its place in a catalogue that runs from Hunting High and Low through Scoundrel Days , Stay on These Roads , East of the Sun, West of the Moon , Memorial Beach , and the late-career return Cast in Steel , an album that had no obligation to be as good as it was.
The book takes seriously what critics largely did that Waaktaar is one of the most distinctive pop songwriters of his generation, whose melodic intelligence was routinely overlooked because his band was filed under teen pop in 1985 and never entirely refiled. That Harket's voice — a three-octave instrument still reaching its upper register four decades on — deserved more analytical attention than it received. That Magne Furuholmen's keyboard work, his visual sensibility, and his contributions to the band's identity were systematically underacknowledged, including within the band's own press.
Alongside the familiar — "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.", "The Living Daylights", "Cry Wolf", "Summer Moved On" — are the tracks that defined the catalogue for anyone who went beyond the greatest the closing track "Soft Rains of April", the B-side that became a fan touchstone, the album track that explains why Scoundrel Days has aged better than the debut. The two disbandments and three reunions are here too, not as biography but as context for the music each separation produced.
This is a book for people who already know the difference between Minor Earth Major Sky and Lifelines . And for people who are about to find out.
This is an unofficial, independent publication. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by a-ha or their management. Part of the 25 Songs. 25 Stories series.
161 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 7, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
May 21, 2026
I never leave bad reviews, I was looking forward to reading this book but 4 songs in and it’s just full of mistakes, song writing credits wrong, saying songs appeared on Hunting High and low and they were on scoundrel days, saying take on me was blocked from no1 by David Bowie, I suspect it’s been written by ai TBH. A great Shame!
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review