a-ha is a band from Norway. They initially rose to fame during the 1980s, but have had continued success in the 1990s and 2000s.

a-ha achieved its biggest success with their debut album and single in 1985. Hunting High and Low peaked at number fifteen on the Billboard charts and yielded an international number-one single, "Take on Me", earning the band a Grammy Award nomination as Best New Artist. Hunting High and Low was one of the best-selling albums of 1986. In 1994, the band went on a hiatus, the same year a-ha reached a sales number of 20 million albums sold worldwide. After a performance at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 1998, the band returned to the studio and recorded 2000's Minor Earth Major Sky, which resulted in a new tour. By 2000, they had reached 36 million albums sold wordwide plus several million singles. In 2002 the band released their seventh studio album Lifelines. Analogue is their newest studio album and is their most successful studio album in the UK since East of the Sun, West of the Moon and has been certified silver..

Formation

The trio, composed of lead vocalist Morten Harket, guitarist Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (Pål Waaktaar until his marriage in 1994) and keyboardist Magne Furuholmen, formed in 1982 and left Norway for London in order to make a career in the music business. They chose the studio of musician, producer and soon-to-be-manager John Ratcliff, because it had a Space Invaders machine. John Ratcliff introduced the boys to his manager, Terry Slater, and after a few meetings a-ha had two managers. Terry Slater and John Ratcliff together formed T.J. Management. To deal with all the technical and musical aspects they have Ratcliff, and Slater's position is the international business manager and liaison to Warner Brothers' head office in Los Angeles. The origin of the name a-ha comes from a title Paul contemplated giving to a song. He could not choose between the names "a-ha" and "A-men". Morten was looking through Paul's notebook and came across the name "a-ha". He liked it, and said, "That's a great name. That's what we should call ourselves." After checking dictionaries in several languages, they found out that a-ha was an international way of expressing recognition, with positive connotations. It was short, easy to say and unusual.

Hunting High and Low (1984–1985)

An early version of "Take on Me" was the first song Morten Harket heard Magne Furuholmen and Pål Waaktaar play in Asker. At that time the song was called "Lesson One", and the two men were still known as Bridges. 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. However, it was re-recorded early the following year by producer Alan Tarney 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 one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and number two in the UK Singles Chart. Sales were aided in the U.S. by heavy rotation on MTV of a music video that may have been dually inspired by the truck chase scene from Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil and the climactic scene from the Ken Russell film Altered States.