I can still hear our screams competing

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

02/11/86 : Scoundrel Days - A-ha

Another nice reminder from days gone by - again they're not completely forgotten because Morten Harket pops up from time to time looking ridiculously good for his age (he's 65 now!). I also hear "Take On Me" or "The Sun Always Shines On TV" occasionally, but I don't think I've ever heard anything from this album - I'm expecting it to be considerably better than it has any right to be.

Yeah, I liked this. It's quite Duranesque - they know they're not going to change the world with what they're doing, but that's no reason not to take it seriously. It also ends with a slightly different style ("The Soft Rains Of April") which definitely brought back echoes of "The Chauffeur" on Rio. I only recognised "Cry Wolf", but I particularly liked "I've Been Losing You" and the title track - they both went straight on my general playlist and everyone knows there is no greater accolade that can be granted. It's a very arty album cover as well, isn't it?

We're at #7 in the charts this week on their fourth week of a decent 28 week run, with it having peaked at #2 for its first two weeks. The top five this week were The Police best-of (a new entry), Paul Simon, Now Dance '86 (another new entry), Madonna and Five Star and the next highest new entry was Big Audio Dynamite (#11).

Wikipedia tells us this is their second album and it features a Yamaha DX7, a Roland Juno 60 and a Fairlight CMI - how unusual for those times! The critics were mixed on it - Smash Hits loved it but Rolling Stone thought it "unfavourable" and I suspect A-ha were perfectly happy with that state of affairs. The album did pretty well commercially, making the top ten in quite a few European countries and, somewhat unsurprisingly, #1 in Norway.

At this point, I went down a bit of an A-ha rabbit-hole because it occurred to me that I had no idea who the non-Morten members of the band were - I now know that Paul Waaktaar-Savoy "was a loner, not social at school, and was unsuccessful attracting girlfriends in his teens" and Magne Furuholmen is good mates with Coldplay and a highly regarded artist who has created Scandinavia's largest sculpture park and designed a stamp. I also learned that Magne's father was killed in an air crash in 1969, which was somewhat remarkably witnessed by a nine year old Morten Harket. As you can probably guess, one of them has a slightly more interesting Wikipedia entry than the other.

"Customers also listened to" Savoy, Holly Johnson, Cyndi Lauper and Nik Kershaw - Savoy featuring Mr and Mrs Waaktaar-Savoy amongst their number. I liked this - 1986 is on a bit of a roll with two decent albums in a row. Do you think it's going to last? (spoiler alert - it won't).

26/10/86 - Very average and bland
09/11/86 - A very enjoyable revisit