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    #26
    I spent a couple of hours in Morten's presence at a festival in the 90s, he'd bought drugs off my sister's mate and then sat with us, he even got an acoustic guitar out and did a few songs, all cover versions. Quite surreal, but he had a really calm vibe that helped mellow out the acid I was tripping on at the time.

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      #27
      Amazing!

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        #28
        Scoundrel Days has a magnificent 1-2-3 with the title track, I've Been Losing You and The Swing of Things. Manhatten Skyline is glorious too. I loved them at the time and still go back to them.

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          #29
          There was an interesting thread on a former OTFer's Facebook the other day about stuff which is wrongly referred to as a one-hit wonder. "Take On Me" is somewhere right near the top of the pile of that wrongness. It's a really famous stand-out song which loads of people remember naturally, but they released a ton of good to great records. Hunting High And Low I think had five or six solid singles alone on it.

          They were still doing just fine up to their third album, and in retrospect, they're one of the first bands I listened to albums track by track as proper, in depth listening experiences.

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            #30
            I am guessing it's from a USian perspective?

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              #31
              I've never heard A-ha referred to as a one hit wonder. Is that a widespread misapprehension? Is it just a stealthy way of making us feel old for knowing it to be cobblers?

              Edit: due to slow typing, cross post with sw2borshch's very good point
              Last edited by Benjm; 01-05-2021, 10:46.

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                #32
                And as The Sun... was a US number 20 and Cry Wolf the only other charter at 50, you can see why that might be. I was never an active fan, but they were a massive pin-up band here for a couple of years that it was 'ok' for boys to like too. I mean, they even did a Bond.

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                  #33
                  It's the same phenomenon as 'the internet' basically ignoring Spectrum/C64 etc. games in the history of computer games. It's US pop history that counts, not British/European stuff.

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                    #34
                    I did used to wonder if "The Sun Only Shines on TV" was written specifically about the airplay the Take on Me video got on MTV, compared to, well, everything else they did. I wonder if Dire Straits are similarly remembered as 'one-hit wonders' over there for "Money for Nothing", for similar reasons?

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                      #35
                      One of the "popular" kids at my school decided that he looked like Morten, due to a passing similarity in hairstyle, and started to adjust the rest of his look to maximise the comparison. Unlike Morten, he was an absolute tool.

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                        #36
                        That reminds me of the Bolo Zenden lad you used to see about Middlesbrough.

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                          #37
                          We had a local Hank Williams too, for the older generation.

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                            #38
                            Originally posted by Benjm View Post
                            One of the "popular" kids at my school decided that he looked like Morten, due to a passing similarity in hairstyle, and started to adjust the rest of his look to maximise the comparison. Unlike Morten, he was an absolute tool.
                            I had a mate at school who fashioned himself after the tits out of Bros. All the denim, dyed blonde hair and everything. He was fighting the girls off every Friday at the football club disco. When he walked in it was like the dance scene in Saturday Night Fever. I met him in a pub in my home town a few years ago, and he now looks like Johnny Vegas. Happy though.
                            Last edited by Rogin the Armchair fan; 01-05-2021, 11:38.

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                              #39
                              Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
                              I did used to wonder if "The Sun Only Shines on TV" was written specifically about the airplay the Take on Me video got on MTV, compared to, well, everything else they did. I wonder if Dire Straits are similarly remembered as 'one-hit wonders' over there for "Money for Nothing", for similar reasons?
                              Brothers in Arms was a number one US album for over two months and nominated for album of the year at the Grammy's.

                              Which is a long way of saying no (I thought it had won album of the year but it had not).

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                                #40
                                There was some kind of late night live gig broadcast on BBC2 a few years, that thing where they got a band into a studio, audience of 250 and let them go. The Mrs and I switched it on because there was absolutely sod all else on the other channels and went from "I suppose this will do" to "holy crap, these guys are amazing".

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                                  #41
                                  Yeah, the idea of a “one hit wonder” may be a leftover from the days when singles were the primary pop music product. The Big Bopper, for example, was a true one hit wonder in that respect.

                                  It’s always going to be country specific and Billboard has lots of subcharts beyond the main top 40 so the definition of what counts as “charting” will vary.

                                  I think that, in the US, A-Ha was a two hit wonder. Maybe three. YouTube, Spotify, etc have made their full output more accessible over here so a lot more people are aware of it. Same with Dexy’s and Soft Cell and a few others.

                                  But Dire Straits weren’t like that. They had multiple popular videos on MTV, as I recall. I don’t know if anything other than Brothers in Arms did well on the chart, but they were definitely “around” for a while.

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                                    #42
                                    Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
                                    I did used to wonder if "The Sun Only Shines on TV" was written specifically about the airplay the Take on Me video got on MTV, compared to, well, everything else they did. I wonder if Dire Straits are similarly remembered as 'one-hit wonders' over there for "Money for Nothing", for similar reasons?
                                    Given that Take On Me was their first hit - and TSASOTV their second - that’d have been a bit presumptuous of them.

                                    (Dire Straits had a few other hits on the Billboard chart.)

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                                      #43
                                      Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                                      that’d have been a bit presumptuous of them.
                                      Especially considering that Take On Me had already been released as a single twice before (albeit the first time with a different production and video) and flopped. No guarantees that it would have been third time lucky.

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                                        #44
                                        It seemed to be a bit of a stretch when the greasy spoon just across from work told us that they would be closed for lunch because a video was being filmed there. It wasn't until Take On Me & their rather individual coffee maker turned up on Max Headroom & Top of the Pops that we believed them.

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                                          #45
                                          Originally posted by diggedy derek View Post
                                          The video to "Take On Me" still looks fantastic, and I find it hard to get to the end of it without almost tearing up. It's just brilliantly done. It's one of a fairly select bunch of old music videos to have accrued over a billion views on YouTube.
                                          I wrote a thesis on that. I ripped most of it from Smash Hits. Apparently, I am now a doctor.' Not even joking.

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                                            #46
                                            Originally posted by caja-dglh View Post
                                            The MTV unplugged they did is brilliant. A great example of still owning the song in an entirely different way.
                                            Totally agree with this. Some of their original songs were decent pop songs, but the stripped down versions are fantastic and also highlight what a tremendous vocalist Morten Harket is.

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                                              #47
                                              Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post

                                              I had a mate at school who fashioned himself after the tits out of Bros. All the denim, dyed blonde hair and everything. He was fighting the girls off every Friday at the football club disco. When he walked in it was like the dance scene in Saturday Night Fever. I met him in a pub in my home town a few years ago, and he now looks like Johnny Vegas. Happy though.
                                              So is he still fighting off the girls with the Johnny Vegas look?

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                                                #48
                                                Regarding the one hit wonder description, a quick google search came up with the following

                                                “a-ha celebrated their 20th anniversary with the release of a new singles collection. Throughout their career, a-ha has officially released 32 singles. 13 of them became top ten singles in the UK, and 14 singles have been number one on the radio lists over the world. The new singles album includes some of the highlights from a-ha's last 20 years.”

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                                                  #49
                                                  Of course, the only true one hit wonder is to have a number one single and nothing, absolutely nothing, else in the singles chart. A-Ha are merely the most egregious example of a band that some people erroneously describe as a OHW.

                                                  C'mon Loose, you've got to tell us what the cafe was.

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                                                    #50
                                                    We must've done a One-hit-wonder thread...

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