Something for Thursday

So if you remember the pop music of the 1980s, you remember a band called a-ha, which had one giant hit in the US called "Take On Me". They followed that up with a couple of less-successful singles (including the theme song for the 1987 James Bond movie The Living Daylights), and then as far as US music fans might recall, they disappeared, so it's not uncommon to hear a-ha referred to as a "one-hit wonder". Thing is, they weren't. a-ha was very successful in Europe (particularly their home country of Norway), and was a major act over there until the 2010s, when they broke up for a time. They have since come back together a few times to perform as a-ha, so they're not really gone.

Anyway, here's the song with its original, ground-breaking video (for reference)...


And here's the reason for this post: this cover of the song by an incredibly talented group of young musicians.


This is all occasioned by the appearance, very briefly, of an orchestrated version of the song in the latest trailer for the upcoming movie Ready Player One. Hopefully that version arises at some point or other.

(By the way, if you like the happy ending of the original video for "Take On Me", don't look up the video of the next single from a-ha, "The Sun Always Shines On TV". Trust me on this.)