An early version of "Take on Me" was the first song that Morten Harket heard Magne Furuholmen and Pål Waaktaar play in Asker. At that time, the song was called "The Juicy Fruit Song", and the two men were still known as Bridges. It was named "Lesson One" when it was first recorded by a-ha. After some rewriting, multiple re-recordings, and three releases, "Take on Me" became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic in 1985 and was the second-best-selling single of 1985. The first version of the song, released in 1984, was promoted by a now-rare video of the band performing the song in front of a blue background. Both the original recording and video were failures. The song was re-recorded with production by Alan Tarney but failed to light up the charts. It was then re-released with a new, groundbreaking video and ultimately sold 1.5 million copies worldwide in one week. Eventually, the single "Take on Me" was estimated to have sold 7–9 million copies worldwide; it peaked at number 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. a-ha became the first Norwegian band to have a number 1 song in the U.S. The song's popularity earned the band a spot on the American television series Soul Train in 1985, making them one of the few white artists to appear on the black music-oriented show.
Sales were aided in the U.S. by heavy rotation on MTV of the new music video, which may have been inspired not only by the truck-chase scene from Terry Gilliam's film Brazil but also by the climactic scene from Ken Russell's film Altered States. The video used a pencil-sketch animation / live-action combination called rotoscoping, in which individual frames of live video are drawn over or colored.[14] It became one of the most instantly recognizable and most enduringly popular music videos in the U.S., where it was nominated for eight awards at the third annual MTV Video Awards in 1986, winning six, including Best New Artist in a Video, Best Concept Video, Best Direction, Best Special Effects, and Viewer's Choice. "Take on Me" was also nominated for Best Video of the Year at the 1986 American Music Awards. Their six MTV Award wins for that video gave them twice as many wins as Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and more than any artist in the three years of the awards combined.
But those were not a-ha's only MTV awards that year. The band's second single was "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.". In the U.S., the song peaked at number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number 17 on Radio & Records airplay chart. A remix version was a club hit, rising to number 5 on the Hot Dance Singles Sales chart. The music video for the song was another popular and critical success, nominated in three categories at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards and winning two awards, for Best Cinematography and Best Editing, bringing a-ha's total to eleven nominations and eight wins. The following year, Peter Gabriel would earn thirteen nominations and win nine awards, also for two videos. In successive years, even as the award categories have expanded, only a few artsts have approached—and none has surpassed—the single-year award totals of a-ha and Gabriel.
a-ha's American success culminated in their 1986 Grammy nomination in the coveted Best New Artist category, which was eventually won by Sade. "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." turned out to be a-ha's last Hot 100 Top 40 single, and to this day in the United States, a-ha is remembered by the general public almost entirely because of the singularly huge success of "Take on Me". As such, the band is frequently considered a one-hit wonder there, despite their two Top 40 hits. In the UK, however, the story was very different: "The Sun Always Shines on TV" was an even bigger hit among British fans than "Take on Me", peaking at number 1. In the UK, a-ha enjoyed continued success with two more hit singles from the same album—"Train Of Thought" and "Hunting High And Low" (with another innovative video)—and the band remained popular throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
The band's first album, 1985's Hunting High and Low, became a worldwide bestseller, spending most of October and November in the top 20 of Billboard's Top 200 album chart. The album and its four hit singles garnered international recognition for a-ha. Hunting High and Low earned platinum status in the United States, UK, and Germany and earned gold status in Brazil and the Netherlands. Hunting High and Low has sold 11 million copies worldwide. The album peaked at number 15 in the U.S., according to Billboard music charts, and has sold about 1.8 million copies in the U.S. It peaked at number 2 on the UK charts, and it spent 38 weeks in the top 10 in Norway, including 8 weeks at number 1.
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