As we come to the end of an era, I look back at the beginning.

As an impressionable nine year old boy, I was always trying to find music that grabbed and held me. In 1985, a song was released that grabbed me so hard, that it drove my family crazy – especially my sister.

“Take On Me” was a tour-de-force, a debut of such brilliance that it refused to be ignored. Of course, at that age, I just loved the excellent video and great keyboards! My interest piqued, I asked for the album, Hunting High & Low to be bought for my tenth birthday, my first proper album.

I can appreciate the wonderful little nuances better now as a grown adult, but back then, I fell in love with a synth pop extravaganza that built on the successes of its first track. Ten songs of pure splendour and significance, that spread themselves over numerous stories bursting to be told.

I could wax lyrical about all four hit UK singles that set the radio airwaves alight, but the album also held some classic gems that deserved to be discovered. The gorgeous “Living A Boy’s Adventure Tale” finishing off the first side of a tape that I consistently replayed, a song that strongly reminded me of one of my favourite films at the time, “The Never-ending Story”. A heart wrenching tale with such beautiful key changes and Morten’s poignant voice echoing over every note.

“Here I Stand & Face The Rain” opens with haunting chanting before flowing into a breathtaking combination of guitar, keyboard and drums to seemingly tell a tale of one man’s lament after a shattering break up.

The comparative simplicity of “And You Tell Me” holds up well to this day, with the group incorporating it into their recent concerts. The story that the shortest song on the album conveys could almost be another part of the one told in “Here I Stand & Face The Rain”, maybe before the tumultuous break-up.
Even the seemingly throw away up tempo tracks of “Dream Myself Alive”, “Love Is Reason” and “The Blue Sky”, have deep and dark lyrics that scream of melancholy.

At the time, the band were seen as pin-ups, a position forced upon them that they were never totally comfortable with, but if you look beyond the posters and videos and actually listen to the lyrics, there is a lot more going on than three Norwegian men playing pop stars.

Twenty five years on, and after numerous changes in musical direction, the debut album stands proudly alongside the last, Foot Of The Mountain as a companion piece.

Hunting High & Low is a classic album that highlights all that was brilliant about the 1980’s as well as foretelling of a quarter century of creative genius that is finally coming to an end.

Thank you a-ha, you will be missed.