Hunting High And Low

Outside of "Take on Me", I can't say this album did anything for me. Just sounds like a lot of generic 80s synthpop. 2.5 stars.

Even the book entry acknowledges that this is very much dining out on one song, or more accurately, the music video of one song. And we all love 'Take On Me' but the goodwill runs out pretty quickly as the remaining 30-odd minutes peters out into an utterly forgettable and nondescript synth-pop cheesefest. One silver lining: its length.

I only knew "Take me on" and "The Sun always Shines on TV" from a-ha. They're absolute bangers, so I don't know why I never checked the rest of their music. I should have, because synth-pop is always a pleasure to hear and this album is pretty lit. The titular song, "Hunting High and Low", is the one that surprised me the most. It has an unexpected depth, both lyrically and musically, with that whole orchestra near the end. "I dream myself alive" is also incredible. Not all the songs reach those heights, but they're still very entertaining, and make you want to dance.

Amazing first track but the rest of the album is a real dud.

Take on Me is a good song. The rest are kind of just decent pop songs. I really didn’t need to hear the rest of this album. It wasn’t very good.

Quite possibly the best pure 80s album. Favorite track: Take On Me

Carried by the singles big time

Outside of the vocals it sounded like a lot of other 80s music. It was still good and enjoyable, just nothing to make it distinguished except for 'Take On Me'.

Ah yes, the album with take on me

I don't really have any funny comments to make about this album cuz I know like nothing about a-ha so like I guess my brief thoughts on every individual song will suffice. As overplayed as the song is, Take On Me is a really great song and its impact is undeniable, great stuff. Train Of Thought isn't as great as the opening track but it's still a solid song with a solid instrumental. The title track isn't as great as either of the previous tracks but I still like it, it's just not that interesting. Somehow it gets worse as the tracks go on, The Blue Sky is a decently boring song but at least it doesn't pan on for too long and it's really not a bad song, just boring. The album recovers from the last 2 tracks with Living a Boy's Adventure Tale, it's a solid song on the same level as Train Of Thought. HOLY FUCKING SHIT I DID NOT EXPECT THIS ALBUM TO HAVE A BETTER SONG THAN TAKE ON ME. The Sun Always Shines on T.V. is an absolute gem of a song even if it's not nearly as iconic as Take On Me this is a way better song and definitely the highlight of the album in my opinion. On a less interesting note, And You Tell Me is a really boring song but at least it's really short so it's not horrible, it's an okay song. Love Is Reason is a really fun song and while not a highlight on the album for me it's still really enjoyable. I Dream Myself Alive is another song that's good but not crazy I don't have much to say about this one ngl. The closer, Here I Stand and Face the Rain started off promising but again it's another song that's enjoyable but not very crazy. Overall this is a good album with a few great songs but uhhhhh a lot of it is just really okay it's not horrible but it's not mindblowing.

Grandiose and beautiful. One of the best ever made, and possible in my top 10. Filled with banger after banger, including Take on Me, Hunting High and Low, and The Sun Always Shines on TV.

- i like living "a boys adventure tale a lot" - also like "and you tell me" - in general i like this album but i don't love it

#115 Take On Me, followed by a bunch of forgettable and generic 80s pop songs.

Inessential 80s pop album

#468 I guess this is not quite my thing but in some ways it is close to it. There is a very 80s synth pop vibe here that sounds like it is very much still preserved in that time. Take On Me is great but feels like it is doing a lot of heavy lifting, whether that’s a fair assessment or not. The album just lacks a little grit for my liking. Heard before? ❌ Would I revisit? ❌ Listen before you die?❓ Fave track(s): Take On Me Rating: 4/10 ⭐️⭐️

Best song is the first song, all the others are unmemorable. I’m convinced this album only blew up cause of the music video. Also you know it’s bad when you listen to a song and say “why is this so much better” and then it turns out the albums ended and you aren’t even on the same band.

The three big tracks promise so much and surprisingly still hold up pretty well, but it’s otherwise pretty dated across the board, and, at times, let’s face it, it’s comically shit.

Add To Collection

It's that one song with the really cool artistic video! Can't say I've ever listened to an a-ha record in its entirety before, but I really liked this one. Fun and entertaining throughout the entire journey and the music, vocals and sequencing all flowed and fit together nicely. This was really enjoyable!

Гимны.

Didn't really need a whole album of this, to be honest. In a-ha's defence, I do remember enjoying a bunch of tracks from their comeback album Major Earth Minor Sky and its follow-up back in 2000/03. So... I don't hate them, I just prefer their later period, not their 80s major hit machine years.

It's become very easy to forget that Take on Me is one of the best songs ever made.

A great single everyone should hear before they die; the rest of the album was a bad version of Erasure, New Order, and the Pet Shop Boys. (My wife enjoyed it though, so a begrudging two stars:)

The one song? The one a-ha is known for? Still a stone cold classic. The rest is fine to just okay synthpop though

If I never have to hear Take On Me again, I'll be a happy person. This song was everywhere in the mid to late 80's and I've never been a fan. The only reason (in my opinion) it got so much airplay was because the video was innovative and MTV played it like every hour. The whole album is 80's synth-pop trash.

Good singing, but the songs are just so twee. I really thought I would like this more based on "Take On Me".

A nostalgic album for me. Been listening to it since it came out. I'd say it's among the best 80s synth albums out there. Maybe not Talk Talk greatness, but pretty damn good.

I felt this album definitely had its highs and its lows. Was listening in a car with distractions. Will listen again sometime with headphones to get the full experience. What can be said about the opening track that hasn't been said before. That song alone is the masterclass of the 1980s

I can tell there is quite a lot of soul in this project - behind the walls of synth, there are lyrics questioning one's place in society and their relationships with others deeply. However, sadly, it just doesn't do much for me. Singer Harket's vocals have a strange twinge to them (they are Norwegian after all) and it all sounds like a rather excessive and plasticky affair. Key tracks: "Take On Me," "Train of Thought"

Take On Me truly is one of the best songs ever written!!!!

"Take On Me" was really a one hit wonder, eh. "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." was also good.

2.75 stars. Album has an all timer on it. And it sonically it sounds amazing, at least on the apple music app. Theres a couple songs on here that are really enjoyable. But also a lot of filler, to me. Its quintessential 80s music, with all the good and bad that comes with it. Take On Me: All time banger, obviously. Music video also a banger. Train of Thought: ok now for songs I haven't heard by them. Pretty standard 80s dance pop, done well though. This 2015 remaster apple music sounds really good. Hunting High and Low: I was caught off guard at the start, but this song is kind of a parody of melodramatic 80s songs. Oh my god is that seagulls I hear? The Blue Sky: Didn't hate this song. Was better than the last two. Living a Boys Adventure: you know, if they got rid of that clarinet sound and just let the bass carry verse, I think this song would be better. Still, decent song. The Sun Always Sines on TV: Whoever did the audio mix or mastering on this was in their damn bag, man. This song slaps too And You Tell Me: Actually, like this weird little song. Love is Reason: They are turning this review to a solid 3, possibly 3.5. Three straight bangers. Can we keep the momentum going? I Dream Myself Alive: Nope. The song is fine but its not a banger. Here I Stand and Face the Rain: yea, fine.

OK I didn't see this coming. I knew I would have a fabulous time listening to Take On Me, but I think I love this whole album? The Sun Always Shines on TV is about to hit heavy rotation here.

Is the bridge of Beautiful Day just fully ripped from The Sun Always Shines on TV?

A-ha should’ve been much bigger than a one hit wonder. Though Take On Me is good enough that their place in history is already pretty well established

This is definitely a case where one incredibly well-written and produced pop song turns an otherwise mediocre album into an all-time classic. "Take On Me" is still a banger still one of the best '80s songs. "The Sun Always Shines on TV" was a great follow-up but nowhere near as glorious. "Here I Stand Face in the Rain" is the only other track on the album that I think I really enjoyed on the album. The title track even though I like the vocals and the melody I'm really not keen on the instrumentation the vocals actually sound more like a great James Bond tune then "The Living Daylights" did, but I thought the backing tracks was really that ubiquitous '80s gloss. The rest of the album to me is pretty much generic mid-80s pop music that I may have gotten into more back when I was 16 and that sound was big but today just sounds dated and kind of bland. I think the three highlights keep it from sinking into the three star zone. (7.1) ★★★½ (7.1)

The most classic Norwegian album of all time. 4 stars

the only thing keeping this above a 1 is the strength of "Take On Me"

Not bad, just not good either. The kind of music my mom would listen to.

Take On Me is great but other than that, nothing else stands out.

For the sake of Take on Me.

Man, how do you compete with Take On Me? While I love a-ha’s overall sound (and it’s all over this album) they came out of the gate with one of the best 80s songs of all time and everything that followed just felt flat. The Sun Always Shines on TV is obvi great but man they fucking nailed it with Take On Me (I’m constantly thinking about the music video too). 3.5 rounded up because you gotta hand it them.

I didn't really think of a-ha as being an album band, perhaps because Take On Me just completely eclipses everything. Nothing else on this album could top (or come close to) Take On Me, just a singularly transformative song. While the sounds of this album are very of its time, I've quite enjoyed the big 80s pop albums from the list because the hooks are so strong and the sound is just big and hard to resist (similarly to how I felt when we had Duran Duran on here). The Sun Always Shines on TV probably my other favourite (I learnt this a few years ago but still always surprisingly to be reminded that the post-chorus/bridge melody from Beautiful Day by U2 was interpolated from this song?????? Anyway sounds great

Sounds just like all the other synth-pop garbage that came out in the 80's.

I went in with high hopes as there are 4 different versions of this album on Tidal which I took to mean there was reason to reissue remastered and expanded versions, but sadly it’s Take on Me and 9 forgettable songs. Take on Me is a 5/5 and the rest are 2s so I think that’s a 2.3 star album of my math checks out.

2.4 Take on me is pretty catchy, I will admit to that. Didnt mind the vocals all in all, got quite the range. But a bit of a slog to get through,

This felt like ‘Take On Me’ and then a bunch of 80’s department store background music

Groupe connu par ses tubes, en particulier ‘Take on me’ que j’apprécie beaucoup. L’album contient quelques autres tubes, et aussi … un peu de remplissage. Il ne rejoindra donc pas ma collection, mais globalement j’ai plutôt apprécié l’écoute et je pourrais l’écouter une seconde fois. =>3/5

Music for mfs who just got an idea It is weird to listen to full albums by "one-hit wonders" bc it's like... none of this other music is supposed to exist......

this album really reminds me of highschool... i like it a lot (lloyd christmas voice) and i didnt know they were from norwary... huh!

definitely leading with the best song on the album, but pleasantly surprised overall. not something i will be revisiting. i was not alive, but i can see how this was big. i don't think it's album i need to hear big tho.

Soft, oddly jangly

Surprisingly good for a commercial 80s album. Rather enjoyed it I must admit.

Абсолютная классика синти поп и 80х. Если вы считали что карьера группы держится только на песне Take On Me, то вы ошибаетесь. На этом альбоме есть множество треков не уступающих этому избитому но гениальному треку

I was prepared to hate this album, feeling oversaturated by “The Song” and by New Wave in general on this project. But I was pleased to find some interesting post-punk sensibilities on here, reminding me of The Jam or The The. Alas, I grew tired of their sound after only 37 minutes, so I don’t think I’ll be back again.

Starts off like "Wow, I've heard this song thousands of times but it has such replay value that I somehow always find myself enjoying it!" Ends up like "Wow, I will never seek this album out again" +1 star for the synth work +1 star for the everlasting single +1 star for being listenable

Really good

I adore Take On Me! It's one of my favourite songs! I was expecting not to care too much for the rest, but it's pretty good. The title track is better than I remembered. Maybe I underrated The Sun Always Shines On T.V. as well.

I dunno. Maybe it was the environment I was listening to it in. Of course I've heard the hits before from this album. Which are nice. But the rest of it just didn't move me. I'll be nice and give it a three, but it really doesn't deserve it

first half better than second 6.5/10 best song - take on me

4 out of 5. What can I say? This album is good. Also it's not on here but shout out to their Bond theme The Living Daylights, it's underrated.

Was skeptical this was going to be mostly filler, given the band's one hit wonder status, but this was actually super fun. Extreme 80s cheese, so if you don't like that thing this album is probably not for you, but I'm kind of a sucker for it. Super dramatic vocals too, the lead singer has some serious pipes.

Favorite Track: Here I Stand and Face the Rain

More highs than lows, and inescapably eighties

I mean it works. Not much to say here. For the most part I feel like 80s-isms kind of ruin most music, but when you go so far with them to the point of true cheesy synth-pop, somehow it works again. This is such a relic of the year, and there are some really fun, timeless tunes. Also a lot of duds. Such is the way. Fave tracks: - Take On Me - Hunting High and Low - The Sun Always Shines on T.V. - Here I Stand and Face the Rain

Stupid. First song is jammin though except for the super high pitched part

a-nah.

3.5 - cheesy 80s but good

Favorite track(s): Take On Me, Hunting High and Low, The Sun Always Shines on T.V.

dobar album, načelno »take on me« u obliku albuma, fakat nije loš, ali nedostaje mi nešto za ocjenu više

(Light 8/10) Lovely 80's synthpop that proves that A-Ha are no mere one hit wonder group. The songwriting is great and the layers of electronics create lovely soundscapes. There's one or two less outstanding tracks, but this overall is great.

A-ha wrote the best Bond theme song (View to a Kill is a close second, but Living Daylights gets me moving every time). I owned this album in the 90s, haven’t thought of it since. Take On Me is a classic. The rest of the album is a decent representation of 80s music. A few standout tracks but nothing as memorable as their main hit. Didn’t need to be included on the list.

Look, this is definitely a fun album. It has a song literally everyone knows and a sound that is pretty polished for the 80s. a-ha was never a great band but they made some pretty good music for the era. For now, i'd rate this highly.

Some great tracks, but also a few weaker ones which drag it down for me.

So average I didn't realise when it finished

**take my advice and other reviews have noted - start this album with track 2 then at the end go back and listen to track 1. First listen rates a 2. Second Listen I am starting from track 2 as an experiment. Hmm Train of Thought sounds a little bit like Bowie! That's kinda neat. I also got the Smiths overall (whole album) from the previous listen. Nice little disco tune that chugs right along. Hunting High and Low. Sensitive ballad which is OK to follow up a disco tune with. Kicking into high gear at the halfway mark which is the mark of a good power ballad, nice triplets drummer to get us to the last verse. Blue Sky was a thing. Jazz ballad (skies, Ella) by that name is a good tune. Living a Boy's Adventure is likely what triggered the Morrissey Smiths connection with the versatility in the upper register. Sensational opening to The Sun Always Shines kicking into another up-tempo tune that serves. And then some. This is an outstanding track! Solid soft/harder combo for And you tell me/Love is Reason to get us closer to the finish line. Dream myself alive is a good tune but fatigue is setting in. Lots of these tunes are generic disco tune #3 AKA the entrance music for Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake. Here I Stand is no the song I would have ended with. This album could use some reshuffling imho of the order of songs. And now back to track one and this is likely the only one I'll every come back to again and again. 3. and it was originally going to be a 2 (cause 1 is reserved for Kid Rock)

Brilliant if you take it off the first song then the song quality drops after that for me

This album most definitely started with the best track but that does not mean it was the only good song. There were other songs but overall this album was just average to me. A-ha does show up on classic alternative and classic pop stations/playlists and they are an easy listen. The album flowed well and was enjoyable, not sure I would throw it into a regular rotation of music, but I would give it another listen for sure.

Still an amazing album

This is a mediocre album with a legendary hit single attached to the side of it. I really wanted to give this a 4, but I don't think I'm OK with calling an album great or even really good just because it contains a single hit track. That really just makes it a good track. If you told me that 'Take on Me' and the rest of the album was created by completely different bands I might actually believe it because it sounds so different from anything else on the album. Standouts Take on Me 3/5

Good

Perfectly enjoyable synth pop from a European angle. The Scandinavians always have a fun take on pop, bringing some extra theatricality to the mix. There's a good amount of filler here, which drags it down a bit, but the hits are absolutely on point.

Apart from the absolute classics, the other tracks feel a little old-fashioned, but I still enjoy them — hence a solid 4

Do me a favour with Hunting High and Low: try to forget a-ha. Forget the pencil-sketch video. Forget Morten Harket’s cheekbones, the screaming teenagers and forty years of “Take on Me” being treated as shorthand for the entire 1980s. Pretend it’s 1985 and somebody has handed you a debut album by three skint young Norwegian music obsessives who have moved to London, are barely keeping themselves going, and have no idea whether any of this is going to work. Dig, if you will, a different picture. What strikes me immediately is how unlikely this music is as the foundation for mass pop stardom. It’s jittery, chilly, melodically awkward and occasionally grandiose to the point of absurdity. The drums can be startlingly physical, little electronic figures shimmer and push at the edges, and the arrangements keep twitching when a more conventional pop record would settle down. There’s a lot of early-80s European art-pop in its bloodstream. Ultravox and Yello make more sense to me as reference points than the generic “synthpop” label. Some of the little repeated melodic cells behave almost like percussion; reduce them further and you can glimpse the kind of electronic reductionism that another generation would later push much further. But a-ha still want melody, drama and enormous choruses. They have all this nervous machinery underneath and then Morten Harket sails over it with a voice capable of ridiculous leaps. Billy MacKenzie kept coming to mind. Harket has the same useful quality of making a songwriter believe that awkward intervals and absurd vocal ranges are perfectly reasonable things to put in a pop song. Some of the verse melodies here are genuinely lumpy. They don’t flow politely from one phrase to the next. Lines run too long, stresses land strangely, and Harket has to dance around the construction until it sounds natural. Then suddenly a chorus arrives with such melodic certainty that you realise these people can write a hook whenever they damn well choose. That combination of cleverness and simplicity is one of the pleasures of the record. Sometimes you can hear young writers thinking a little too hard. Then something like “And You Tell Me” appears, barely decorated, with a melody so obvious after the event that anyone who has ever tried writing songs wants to throw something at the wall. The temptation is always to mistrust the first simple impulse and improve it to death. They don’t. Bastards. The English is occasionally odd too, but I rather like that. These are young Norwegians writing in a second language, and sometimes the lyrics have an angularity that matches the music. At their best, they capture something quite specific: being young, foreign, ambitious, broke and slightly adrift in London. The grand adventure of leaving Norway to become musicians turns out to involve cheap food, cold rooms, uncertainty and a nagging awareness that the whole thing might have been a terrible idea. That gives the album much of its emotional character. There is a real froideur to it, but also constant yearning. The surfaces can be cool and distant while Harket’s voice keeps reaching across them. That tension is probably what makes “The Sun Always Shines on T.V.” such an extraordinary piece of work. It is almost monstrously focused: enormous, controlled, cold on the outside and desperate underneath. Everything the album has been trying to do suddenly locks into place. It isn’t flawless. Occasionally the treatment makes the material sound slighter than it is. “Love Is Reason” is the obvious example: a lyric about obsessive new love and wanting to reshape yourself for another person gets octave bass, chirpy little interjections and a treatment so obscenely perky that it starts wandering into “Life Is Life, la la la la la” territory. A little too Europop for my taste. Elsewhere, though, the older musical ambitions and the newer technology fuse beautifully. By the end of the album there are long lines, odd meters and unexpected chord changes that feel almost progressive in spirit. You can hear musicians whose formative loves predate synthpop discovering what the new machinery allows them to do rather than merely chasing whatever was fashionable in 1982. And all this was made before everyone started screaming. That may be the most interesting thing about a-ha. Their story is sheer persistence in two stages. First came the persistence needed to get Hunting High and Low made at all. Stay in London. Stay broke. Keep writing. Keep recording. Fail. Try again. Lesser commitment sends them home to Norway chastened, muttering that the music business is a load of shit. They become nearly-boys, never even famous enough to become has-beens. Then the wish comes true in the most perverse possible way. They want international recognition and get hysteria. They want people to hear their music and find themselves confronted by thousands of people screaming over it. They want to be taken seriously as musicians and discover that the world is overwhelmingly interested in Morten Harket’s cheekbones. It’s the Bedazzled version of success: the genie grants the wish while completely misunderstanding the point of it. So the second stage of a-ha’s persistence becomes a much longer one: trying to get out from underneath the form their success took and persuade people to hear what they were actually doing. Hunting High and Low catches them before any of that feedback has arrived. Three serious, broke young men making a chilly, funny, ambitious, occasionally gauche and frequently fascinating art-pop record while hardly anybody is interested. Then everybody is.

Fühlt sich an wie der Intro Track (Take on me) logisch weiter gedacht. Und das ist was Gutes

9/10 8.4/10 8.7/10 7.9/10 8/10 8.8/10 8.3/10 8.5/10 8.5/10 8.5/10

Only listened to a couple of songs. Take On Me is still fun. The rest that I heard I thought should be classified adult contemporary rather than pop. I didn't feel compelled to keep listening, although I enjoyed it well enough.

good pop

"Take on Me" is obviously the jewel in the crown here, but I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of what this album had to offer. It's a shame that it very much suffers from the one-hit wonder curse in the public consciousness, as it's a high-quality 80s synth pop package across its running time. Beneath its glossy exterior lies a surprising amount of musical depth, dramatic flair and classical undercurrents, particularly on numbers such as "The Sun Always Shines on TV" which functions as an epic, operatic counterweight during the album's mid-section. You then have the title track which offers some welcome respite and tenderness. The production is perhaps lacking a touch of grit to lend some of these songs the full-bodied muscularity they deserve, but the songs are 100% there and emotionally resonant. I'd absolutely purchase this.

Mediocre sad boy synth pop

приятный альбом. но для 5 баллов не хватило немного

Going in I already knew I liked take on me. Having gone through with the whole album I did find I also really enjoyed the sun always shines on tv but the rest of the album was quite difficult to sit through.

Apart from the global hit, the title track and ‘The Sun Always Shines On T.V.’, I wasn’t familiar with any of the other tracks on this album. But I wasn’t disappointed. Three stars...

8/27/26. Pretty quintessential 80s pop and some good songs beyond Take On Me. Lots of catchy-ness throughout the record.

This might grow on but those vocals make it tough for me to want to keep listening, despite the fact that I think "Take On Me" is a fine song!

2.5

"Take On Me" was a hit, and I think it is indeed a good song. However, I'm not a big fan of this genre, and I find the rest of the album not that good. Starting the album with such a big hit is not the best idea (unless you are Dylan, and can contine with almost equally good tracks). Overall, it is good, but I don't find it very interesting. So, 3 stars. Apart from "Take On Me", I also enjoyed: "Train of Thought" (the first section of the song reminds me a bit of Bowie...and that's always a positive), "Hunting High And Low", "The Sun Always Shines On TV", or "Here I Stand And Face The Rain".

Aside from the opener all pretty unremarkable

Bold to lead with Take on Me, naturally will disappoint afterwards. But overall it was ok.

Take on me was definitely the peak on this