Max's Musings

Take On Me

"Take On Me" and it's iconic video are landmarks of the 80s. Their popularity endures even today, and the video consistently makes the list of top five music videos no matter who is doing the judging. There's something compelling, something elusive, about this song and the video.

The first release of the song in the UK failed. So did the second and third releases. The band thought that Warner, the company they'd signed with, was about to drop them. But Andrew Wickham , who'd originally signed them, believed in the band and the song.

Wickham remembers his first encounter with the band as being like something from Hans Christian Anderson. In the first place, they were from Norway and looked like lithe Nordic Gods. When they sang, Wickham wondered how Morten Harket could have movie star looks and a voice like Roy Orbison. That first impression proved prophetic.

The video that accompanied first release of "Take On Me" wasn't bad, exactly. But it was routine--it consisted of nothing but the band singing and playing instruments on a sound stage. True, they wore tight and tattered jeans, but their perfectly coifed hair added an MTV veneer that clashed with the song.

The sound design was even worse. When the band prepared their original audition track, they'd envisioned an electronic, what we might today call cybernetic, tone to the famous opening riff. They didn't have access to the technology to make that happen, so they said they just tried to play like robots. The original producer did have access to a synthesizer, but not one that was adequate to even reproduce the sound on the band's original track.

After three tries, Wickham brought Alan Tarney in, and he worked with the band to reproduce and enhance the vision from their audition track. Instead of one synth, he layered together as many as twenty. He worked with the artists to achieve the sound that we know today.

Harket says that it wasn't until then that he realized how to approach the song with his voice, and "then it was there. It had its wings."

Wickham also brought in Jeff Ayeroff to produce a new video, and he had the idea of using animation. Ayeroff brought in Steve Barron, who had directed the ground-breaking "Billy Jean" video for Michael Jackson. Between Ayeroff and Barron, it's not entirely clear who was responsible for the video's story board, but it's the story that makes the video so special.

One of the animators, Candace Reckinger, described the story as a fairy tale, like Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. It even has elements of the hero's journey--or, in this case, the heroine's journey. It's also an inter-dimensional love story--a slipstream before anyone knew what that that meant. The video starts with a woman who has a hum-drum life and fantasizes over a comic book. There's a call to adventure when a hand reaches out from the comic book and draws her into another world, an animated world. They have an adventure, and then she returns to the real world. At the end, her love returns to her--or maybe not. The video doesn't quite come to closure on whether or not they reunite in the real world. There's a hint that everything, adventure, love, even life, must come to an end.

All of the elements of the video--the love affair, the adventure, even the meloncholy sense of loss hinted at in the ending--all of those are in the song, too. Despite the drumbeat of the riff, it's in a minor key. Even the lyrics convey longing, loss, and, at the end, hope. The song and video are the perfect marriage of media.

As it happens, I've recenlty written a slipstream story grounded in the original video. It even quotes bits from the lyrics.

STATIC

In a Day or Two  (18+) A slipstream tale in four parts inspired by the aha hit "Take on Me." #2303342 by Max Griffin 🏳️‍🌈

While the video's inter-dimennsional love affiar is the clear inspiration for the video, the musical inspiration for the more melancholy mood of my story is this amazing acoustic version of the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xKM3mGt2pE
It's Merton Harket singing, with his original band mates accompanying. Even today, Harket's voice and range are amazing. The riff is still there. But while the original version makes you want to dance, this one is...different. It's worth hearing.

                                       
The original video, remastered
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914&list=PL0QFDUXn1p9TlNgLR74MU8lstzAU1T...

                                       
Michael Jackson's BIlly Jean video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y

                                       
The story behind Take On Me in three parts. Much of the above is based on these three videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlTHJJX7QVU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcxLyGKw48s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lho0_9-V-8