As I mentioned previously on the Twitter, every #softrockTues (which I started. You’re welcome) I’m planning on posting my #softrockTues song pick on here and sharing with you, dear readers, the back story of what that particular song means to me.
Today the #softrockTues pick is “Take On Me” by A-Ha.
Yes, it’s the literal version, and it’s fantastic.
This was my life when I was younger: A lot of MTV and a lot of reading (I wasn’t what you would call an “athletic” child). I also have a propensity to memorize really random facts about people in pop culture. For instance, if we’re watching a show together and a guest star pops on who looks familiar to you, I can usually tell you that she’s the girl who played Nicole’s best friend on My Two Dads. And later, while we’re watching that same show and you make a comment about the star’s dancing, I can also tell you that the star of the show used to be on the Mickey Mouse Club (or MMC, as they kept trying to call it. Which actually never caught on. You should also know that “MMC” came on right after “KIDS Incorporated” which also starred Fergie from Black-Eyed Peas (which happened after she was a member of Wild Orchid with her sister Renee (who was also on KIDS) which was a girl group produced by JC Chavez from N’Sync and of which had a guest appearance on 90210 when they kept trying to do that “After Dark” musical guest star performance thing, which is how you know that a show is dying and is about to jump the shark. Aka, The O.C.), Jennifer Love Hewitt, and the guy who later became AC Slater on “Saved By The Bell” but whose real name I can’t remember and don’t really care about enough to go check) and was also in this TV show called Malibu Shores that had really great camera work but super shitty writing and she played a bulimic who hid candy bars under her bed and was really pissed when she was sent to rehab (but the really interesting thing about that show was that the guy who played the girl’s boyfriend was also her boyfriend in real life and was also on the Mickey Mouse Club).
Anyway.
So “Take On Me” by A-Ha had a special place in my heart because A) even today? This video would still be ultra cool and cutting edge B) LOOK at those guys and C) a little story that goes like this -
One random weekend while on a trip with my parents, I convinced myself to buy a Tiger Beat-type magazine because I felt like maybe I should start acting like all the other girls my age. I couldn’t see what the big deal was about these magazines, but it seemed like a lot of girls from my school had posters from Tiger Beat of Kirk Cameron and other boys from shows and bands on their bedroom walls, and I kind of wanted to see what the big deal was. Also, I was kind of tired of my mom telling me that magazines like Glamour or Harper’s Bazaar were too old for me, and I thought that, just this one time, I could get her off my back when it came to my reading material.
So apparently this magazine had put on a contest for one lucky girl to win the chance to “hang out for a day” with the guys from A-Ha. I already knew who A-Ha was from their “Take On Me” video – which had kind of made me stare at the lead singer with this wide-eyed fascination and whisper, “He’s cuuuute.” I also already knew that they were from Norway and that they had been given some type of medal or award from the Queen of Norway for musical excellence, which I thought was weird since I only knew one song of theirs, but I figured that Norway must not have a lot of bands then, so maybe having one song on MTV must be a really big deal*.
This girl with long brown hair and a jean jacket won the contest, so they took what looked like really boring pictures of the girl and the band hanging out in a park together. One of the pictures was of the lead singer holding up half this girl’s hair, with an expression on his face like he had never been allowed to touch a girl’s hair before and could not wrap his head around the fact that he was able to do it now. The quote was “She had really soft hair. She must use nice shampoo.”
That was it. That was pretty much the whole gist of the afternoon hangout. I remember reading the story and thinking, “GOD. These guys are totally dumb and BORING*.”It was the first time in my life that I realized that super cute boys could also be super dumb. And that realization changed my entire life.
The End.
*Later, when I started to gain a better conceptualization of Norway and its inhabitants, this started to make more sense.
