A-HA (NORWAY)

A-ha were the most successful of the 3 Norwegian acts to make our charts. Before they came along we had seen a hit each from a band called Titanic and one from Abba’s Frida who both hailed from Norway. A-ha were a 3 piece consisting of Morten Harket, Magne Furuholemn and Paul Waatkar. They named themselves after a song called ‘A-ha’ which Waatkar had written but which was regarded by Harket as ‘a terrible song’. Their first global hit was ‘Take On Me’ but the song was not an immediate hit. In fact it was re-recorded and re-released twice before it became a global smash hit, topping the US charts on 19 October 1982. Despite this early US success, they would only see 3 songs make the Billboard Hot 100 (‘Take On Me’, ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ (#20) and ‘Cry Wolf’ (#50)). They were far more successful in the UK where they have seen 25 (at the time of writing) UK charting hits with ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ being their only chart topper. ‘Take On Me’ would spend 3 weeks at 2, stuck behind Jennifer Rush’s ‘The Power of Love’.

Date of entry	Song	Peak (weeks at 1)	Weeks
16-Nov-1985	Take On Me	7	16
02-Mar-1986	The Sun Always Shines On T.V.	8	14
25-Jan-1987	I’ve Been Losing You	23	11
29-Mar-1987	Cry Wolf	13	14
16-Jul-1987	The Living Daylights	5	17
26-May-1988	Stay On These Roads	4	19
27-Oct-1988	The Blood That Moves The Body	11	15
		Total hits	7
		Total weeks	106

Biggest climber awards	6
Star rater climbs	12
Biggest fallers	6
Weeks with oldest in the charts	0
Longest run in the charts (weeks)	29
Weeks with more than 1 in the charts	4
Biggest gap between hits (weeks)	33
Top 30 points ranking	52
Top 20 points ranking	=82
Top 30 points	1570
Top 20 points	640

A-ha were 1 of 6 acts to see 100 weeks or more, but not see a number 1 hit.