Part II: Afternoon high in the summers of our youth
Perhaps it was the long time they had spent away from the studio, perhaps it was the eagerness of their many faithful fans to hear new music from their heroes, but either way their comeback album sold far better than the previous ones, giving them four hit singles, and in point of fact, each of the singles went to number one. A-ha had not been so popular since the days of “Take on me”, and the no doubt vindicating factor for them was that they had not only become in demand again, but had done so on their own terms. They had not gone back to writing pop songs in a desperate attempt to recapture former glories, or brought in guest or star writers to help them craft a hit single. They had remained true to their own vision of the band, and people had understood and agreed this was the way to go.
The only real differences, in terms of songwriting, was that Mags got more involved, writing four of the thirteen songs on the album, one of which was one of the number one hit singles, and Morton wrote two, one with Ole Sverre-Olsen and another with Havard Rem. Also, Pal's new wife Lauren Savoy wrote two songs with her husband, again both of which were number one hit singles. The good times certainly seemed to be back for a-ha! Their internet homecoming webcast in 2001 garnered over three million hits, the third largest of its kind ever. “Minor earth” is a marvellous album, and it's easy to see why it did so well. In addition to being a well-crafted, serious, mature album of thoughtful rock songs and aching ballads, the album was now aimed towards and appealing to the older fans, who had grown up now. It was fifteen years since the first keyboard arpeggios of “Take on me” reverberated around the discos and the radios of the world, and the people who had danced to the tunes on “Hunting high and low” were older and wiser, looking for something more mature from a band previously only known as a pop act.
“Minor earth, major sky” came just at the right moment, when a-ha teenage fans were becoming a-ha middle-age fans, and it captured the
zeitgeist all over again. Songs like “Barely hanging on”, “To let you win”, “Summer moved on” and “I wish I cared” see a-ha make the often difficult transition from pop band to (semi)-serious rock band in really two albums. “Memorial Beach” had been the midway point in that transition, leaving albums --- albeit great ones --- like “Stay on these roads” and “Hunting high and low” behind for more mature shores; with “Minor earth major sky” the transformation was complete. A-ha were now an internationally respected rock band, if still retaining some pop sensibilities. Some people were, and are, always going to see them as “those guys that had that song”, but a-ha had successfully reinvented themselves, and never sounded better.
Also their longest album, “Minor earth”, clocking in at just under 59 minutes, also has the most tracks on an a-ha album, thirteen. Unlucky? It would seem not. They even felt comfortable enough with their won-back fame to flirt with controversy for the video for “Velvet”, tying in with the darker themes of their “new” music. The video --- dealing as it does with the
very dodgy subject of necrophilia, apparently --- certainly puts an extremely creepy slant to what is otherwise a beautiful ballad. I'd really rather not think about it, thank you.
To come back from basically the abyss of obscurity with an album that gives you not only four singles, not only four
hit singles, but four
number one singles --- think about that:
every track released as a single went to the top --- is a huge achievement, and no more than a-ha deserved. They were very much an underappreciated band and were finally getting the recognition they were due, after being dismissed as one-hit (or even three-album) wonders. And there was a lot more to come.
The guys did not hang around after the success of “Minor earth”, and the next year saw the release of “Lifelines”, their seventh album. Although the singles taken from it were nowhere near as successful as those from the previous album (hardly at all, other than in their native Norway, bastion of their popularity and fanbase) the album sold almost as well, and it continues the mature and considered approach the band had taken since their reformation, and indeed prior to breaking up. With a much broader songwriter base --- Morton writing or co-writing five of the tracks, Mags writing four solo, including the title track, and Ole Sverre-Olsen renewing his songwriting partnership with Morton on two of the tracks, it's one of a-ha's strongest albums, and one of my own personal favourites.
The title track, written by Mags, is a great opener, and really it justs gets better from there. It certainly boasts some of the weirdest --- even for a-ha --- lyrics in their repertoire, with lines like
”When your colleagues can't recall your name/ Time and time again/ There's a reason for it/ When your name's the butt of every joke/ Just about to croak/ There's a reason for it” or
”We have seen the rain before/ Not like this - It's flooding every shore /People come and people go/ I can hear their laughter through the door / But no one's keeping score”.
It's much more of an upbeat album than the previous two, perhaps fuelled by a-ha's restored public acceptance and their triumphant return, and songs like “Forever not yours”, while melancholy in its lyric, bounces along at a pretty happy rate, as does “Afternoon high” and the extremely odd “Oranges on appletrees”. But a-ha have not ditched their darker side, and it's evident on songs like “Did anyone approach you” and "You wanted more". In between there are the usual stunning ballads --- “Time and again”, “White canvas” and “A little bit” stand out here --- along with something of a return to the happy pop of the first three albums with tracks like “Afternoon high”, “Oranges on apple trees” and "Dragonfly". “Lifelines”, though less popular and successful than its predecessor, is nevertheless the album of theirs I consider the most rounded, a heady mix of ballads, pop songs and rock songs, something for everyone.
Taking some time out to tour, the next album released by the guys was not until 2005, and would prove to be their penultimate. It would also, in my humble opinion, turn out to be their best and most cohesive effort since “Scoundrel days”.
This is, quite simply, an album with not one single bad track, and an absolute slew of excellent ones. If this had been a-ha's swansong, it would have been quite fitting and appropriate, though there's nothing of the sense of a farewell about “Analogue”: it's a band at the very top of their game, having reinvented themselves and essentially conquered the world --- twice --- there seemed to be no stopping these three guys from Norway. A mixture of boppy uptempo rock/pop and searing ballads, there just is so much to love about this album.
Highlights, by their very nature, can't apply to this album, but the tracks that stand out as even better than the really good ones, for me, are “Over the treetops”, “White dwarf”, “Cosy prisons”, with absolutely some of the very very best ballads a-ha have ever written in “A fine blue line”, “Birthright” and the simply stunning “Summers of our youth”, where Mags gets to sing (only the second time ever, and far better than his initial effort) with Morton on the choruses adding quite literally the voice of an angel on Earth to an already perfect song, and a wonderful closer, as well as what could have been the last ever a-ha song.
But special mention must also be made of “Halfway through the tour”, which clocks in at seven and a half minutes, making it into the top three longest a-ha songs, and as close to an epic as this band have ever recorded. Starting out fast and boppy, very much an uptempo pop song, it morphs about halfway through into a lush, gentle little instrumental that just takes your breath away. I must compliment the songwriting of Mags Furuholmen, because here he writes more than half of the songs --- either solo or with another person --- and they're without exception excellent. In fact, four of the really great songs --- “Don't do me any favours”, “Cosy prisons”, “A fine blue line” and the closer “The summers of our youth” --- are all written by him solo, with the opener “Celice” and the unutterably brilliant “Birthright” are co-written by him. Pal, in contrast, writes only four, with one other co-written with Mags and Max Martin.
Mind you, it is Pal who writes the wonderful epic “Halfway through the tour”, which just shows they all can write amazing songs. Even Morton writes co-writes two. This album is a total triumph, and can be seen as the very pinnacle of a-ha's creative and lyrical prowess, their musical expertise never having been in doubt throughout their long career. It's such a great album that I wish there was another like it, but there isn't, and that's how it should be.
Ending on a high note, as indeed their final live album was titled, a-ha released their ninth, and last, album in 2010. “Foot of the mountain” brought their sound right back full circle, with synthy pop songs more in the mould of “Hunting high and low” and “Scoundrel days” than the later, more mature albums. Perhaps they felt that they were finishing up, so there was no need to expand their musical boundaries any further, or maybe they actually wanted to return to where it all began before it all came to an end, but either way I find it a bit of a disappointment that, having come so far from the tag of pop band and having carved out their own niche in music, beating the odds and reinventing themselves, the guys decided to go back to their beginnings.
Consequently, “Foot of the mountain” was, for me, a bit of a letdown after albums like “Analogue” and “Minor earth major sky”. There's nothing wrong with it, just as there's nothing wrong with the early albums, but I do see it as something of a step backwards, and there is no longer any chance that there will be any more steps forward, unless a-ha decide to reunite in the future. For now, we're left with an album of pretty standard pop songs, the deep writing and themes utilised on previous album mostly discarded in favour of more radio-friendly fare, though “What there is” is a nice little song, and the title track is very good too, different in temperament to most of the rest of the album. Lyrically, it's quite similar to Glenn Frey's “River of dreams”, with the idea of leaving the city behind to live at one with nature.
Songwriting duties for this last album are more or less shared equally by Mags and Pal: Morton has no input this final time. Not surprisingly, as it was widely known to be a-ha's last album to be released, “Foot of the mountain” did very well in the charts, in fact giving them their best placing since “Stay on these roads”. This despite the fact that “Analogue” is a far, far superior album in every way. I guess you can't overestimate the power of something being the last of its kind. There are some good tracks on it, some great ones even. “Nothing is keeping you here” (a note to self, perhaps, on their retirement?) has an opening piano riff very reminscent of Harry Nilsson's “Everybody's talkin' at me”, and bops along nicely with a sort of bittersweet air of farewell, and thanks perhaps.
“Sunny mystery” is nice too, and “Start the simulator”, the closing track on the album and technically the last ever a-ha song (though they did release one more single after this) is interestingly different, a love song written using only technical terms, but in general I don't get the same feeling from this album that I do from “Analogue” or “Lifelines”, and as it's their swansong it is a pity: I would have preferred them to have gone out with a fantastic album, their best ever, but for me, that's not the case and it's more a damp squib than a firecracker. Ah well, such is life.
The final new a-ha song was released as part of the compilation “25”, their last recording, and was called “Butterfly, butterfly (The last hurrah)”. They appeared as part of the memorial services for the massacre in Norway earlier this year, playing “Stay on these roads”, and that was, to date, their final appearance together. It's likely they will release further solo material, as each has their own project and albums already released, but whether or not we will see a reunion in the future remains to be seen.
For almost thirty years a-ha flew the musical flag for Norway, a country previously ignored by the music world. They essentially put Norway on the map, and are and ever will be heroes in their home country. They also influenced later bands like Coldplay and Keane, and showed the world that a pop band can expand beyond those sometimes limited horizons, change and evolve, and come back stronger. They showed us that just because the band is made up of three “pretty boys” doesn't mean that they have to rely on their looks alone, and also that a trio can write their own excellent songs without input from major songwriters, and still carve a successful and varied career over the course of three decades.
Those who want to dismiss them on the basis of “Take on me” will probably continue to do so, but that is just their ignorance. A-ha were always more than just one or two hit singles, and for those prepared to put in the time and dig into their catalogue, the rewards are there to be heard. Not a boy band by any means, a-ha were always in control of their own music, and their own destiny, and they remain a shining example of dogged perserverance and talent shining through, in this age where the band is often just a tool for the record producer or label to use, a means to an end, a source of revenue. They epitomised the brighter, more optimistic side of pop music, and left behind them a musical legacy that will last long after other, more currently popular acts have been long forgotten and dumped in favour of the next big thing.
They came, they took on the world, had their scoundrel days, stayed on these roads and can now happily retire to live at the foot of the mountain.