a-ha

The Norwegian teen pop idols a-ha (responsible for a series of 1980s smash hits like Take On Me and The Sun Always Shines On TV) were a rare hit band from Scandinavia who survived the fall-out of their early success to make significant marks through the 1990s and 2000s. Their early relocation to London paid off big time with their first release "Take On Me", a song that Mags Furuholmen and Pal Gamst first played together in their previous band, Bridges (when it was originally called The Juicy Fruit Song and then Lesson One). Promoted by an inventive animated video, the track became the second-biggest selling single of 1985 and made a-ha stars both in the UK and US; "The Sun Always Shines On TV" followed as they became major-league pop idols. The group's style became rockier on second album Scoundrel Days but, while they remained a popular attraction, the fervour of their early success steadily dissipated, though they did have another big hit with the theme song to the James Bond movie The Living Daylights. In 1991 they won a place in the Guinness Book of Records after attracting nearly 200,000 fans to a gig in Brazil – the biggest paying audience ever –but the band drifted apart in 1994. They reunited four years later and had further hits with "Forever Not Yours", "Lifelines" and "Analogue (All I Want)". However, after a major world tour, they split again in 2010 having sold over 79 million albums. They reunited in 2015 for a two-year period and released tenth studio album Cast in Steel, with The Ultimate A-ha following in 2016. The live acoustic recording MTV Unplugged: Summer Solstice came next, featuring appearances by Ian McCulloch, Alison Moyet, Lissie and Ingrid Helene Håvik. Accompanied by the Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, the band re-emerged in 2022 with their 11th studio album True North, which was released by RCA and Sony Music and went to number 12 on the UK Albums Chart.

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