I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s definitely becoming a bit of a chart theme over the past year or so: classic #2s making #1 in inferior cover versions. We’ve had 911’s ‘A Little Bit More’, Westlife’s ‘I Have a Dream’, and Madonna’s infamous ‘American Pie’. But is this next chart-topping cover the most egregious…?
Take on Me, by A1 (their 1st of two #1s)
1 week, from 3rd – 10th September 2000
Or is it a harmless tribute, bringing a much-loved classic to the ears of a new generation…? (Though there were only fifteen years between this and the original ‘Take on Me’, so I’m not sure enough time could have passed for it to have been forgotten.) The first thing that stands out are the reedy vocals, which simply cannot compete with Morten Harket, the ‘80s most crystalline voice. The producers try to paper over the cracks, by distorting, or by beefing them up with reverb and echo, and in the chorus Ben Adams makes a decent enough attempt at the high note (though the sceptic in me wonders if he didn’t have some electronic assistance…)
The original riff is of course, forever and always, a classic. So if you were to stumble across this version without ever having heard the original, then you might be impressed. But on top of the riff there are lots of pointless effects and window dressing. In fact, ‘pointless’ is the perfect word here. Why did A1 need to do this?
They had already enjoyed four Top 10 hits from their debut album, and the single following this – if I’m not mistaken – is something of a noughties pop classic. So, was it more of a statement? We’re back, with our second album, and a cover that’s bound to get us attention? I mean it worked, after all. Here they are, with their first #1. And they weren’t done meddling with the pop canon, as the B-Side was a Beatles medley.
A1 had been formed by Tim Byrne, the mastermind behind Steps, and Paul Marazzi, who had failed the audition to be in Steps. In my mind, they were very much a second division boyband, more Another Level than Take That, but they stayed together for three albums and eight Top 10 singles in total. The A-ha connection goes beyond this record, too, as they had a Norwegian member, Christian Ingebrigsten, and were almost as successful in Norway as they were in the UK.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
I’m only slightly ashamed to say that a lot of these 21st century No 1’s are tunes I simply don’t remember. But reading through your critique of this and the mention of likely electronic assistance about the high note, it occurred to me that the name A1 has an unfortunate resemblance to AI, although they couldn’t have foreseen that nearly quarter of a century ago. But I agree, this and the others you mention in your first paragraph were poor imitations, a pale shadow of the originals. I’m racking my brains trying to think of a cover version at No 1 that bettered the original, and there must be others alongside Joe Cocker in 1968 and The Detroit Spinners in 1980, but they’re the only ones to spring to mind at the moment.
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The Tide Is High…? As in Blondie covering the original, not Atomic Kitten covering Blondie. Not that the original isn’t good…
Speaking of AI, another commenter mentioned the video to this, featuring a storyline involving an AI-created virus sweeping the world, which feels very prescient twenty five years on.
Ah yes, ‘The Tide is High’, you have a good point there, although it was for me probably the least impressive of Blondie’s chart-toppers.
Yeah, but that’s more to do with how good the others are, rather than TDIH being poor… There’s also the Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody, I’d suggest, which is now seen as the definitive version
I’m not sure what TDIH is meant to mean… TTIH would be the correct acronym!
(My first reply just now went AWOL and may yet do a Lazarus on us…if not)
Arghhhh! sorry about the acronym blooper for TTIH last time – combination of typing in a hurry and a ropey worn keyboard. ‘Unchained Melody’ is for many the definitive version, yes, but it’s one of those songs I’ve been force-fed so much that I’m not over-keen to hear it again, unless you mean – you guessed it – the priceless Peter Sellers & Spike Milligan demolition job!
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No! The acronymn blooper was mine. You wrote the title out perfectly!
Yes, I suppose Unchained Melody has been done to death. But the Righteous Bros version is still better than the first chart-topping version by Jimmy Young (and of course better than subsequent hatchet jobs by Robson & Jerome, and Gareth Gates).
Yeah, it’s a bit pointless. Crazy the original never topped the charts.
As a 25-year-old who had only just turned one at this time in 2000, It’s been fascinating watching the era of the boy band in the 90s – beginning with arguably New Kids on the Block in terms of major boy bands with widespread appeal – and early 2000s when boys bands don’t really exist anymore in the West (the major boy bands now are all K-pop groups, and even they share the spotlight with the K-pop girl groups). One Direction and The Wanted kinda helped bring it back at least outside of the UK for a while, but Western boy bands have been completely overshadowed by K-pop. And it’s been interesting seeing the difference between British and American boy bands in how they present themselves and their music.
Also doesn’t help that a lot of teenage boys/young adults who want to get into music either become rappers, R&B, country, folk pop artists or even rock artists. Pop has become extremely female-focused. The audience for pop has always been female-dominated, but pop has never had so much female domination as it does in this decade in terms of the artists within the genre. Not saying that’s a bad thing – it’s fascinating.
Oh, A1’s cover of “Take on Me”? It’s honestly pretty decent. Not the best thing in the world, but I don’t hate it at all. Maybe because the original is such a masterpiece that any version that doesn’t try to actively fuck things up can be good. I mean, the song works extremely well acoustically, why wouldn’t it work as a piece of teen pop? Also, is the music video kinda uncannily relevant to the 2020s? A global virus? AI?
I hate to comment on their looks, but while the members of A1 are fine looking boys, but with how pretty the K-pop boy bands are (a lot of them are pressured to go under the knife unfournately), I forget how average-looking a lot of these 90s/2000s boy bands were. Morten Harket is better-looking than all the members of A1 combined.
Yeah at this point in chart history we are at boyband saturation point. It’s amazing how there was an audience for them all, enough pocket money to buy all their singles, and how much it’s changed in the two decades since. I think the drop in physical sales killed off the boyand, as a lot of the the time their records were bought as statements, or mementos, through love for the band, almost like voting for a political party, rather than because they wanted to listen to the music. My theory anwyay…
I think A1 were at the better-looking end of the boyband scale. Three of them are pretty cute, with one slightly rough. It’s a feature of British boybands at the time, that they had to feature one bruiser for a bit of edge: see also Jay from Five, or Keith Duffy from Boyzone.
Why do this? …I wasn’t a huge fan of the original in the 80s but I did recognize that if it were played even by instruments I liked it would still sound good. Plus…that video was groundbreaking at the time…it was what got a lot of people in the song. If you are going to cover a song…cover one from 3 decades ago that sounded like a hit but wasn’t (like Joan Jett did with I Love Rock and Roll)….not a well known hit.
Yeah, it basically means this record was resigned to being forgotten about as soon as it left the charts. Nobody is ever going to play this over the original, even if it isn’t terrible. Disposable pop at its peak?
Yes your last sentence is right on the money. I will have to say though the original…again…that video was so fresh and new at the time. I would not ever underestimate that….but this? Yea no one will remember it.
It took brass to try and keep up with a-ha, few can match Morten’s range (though I saw a good live go at it last month, on the That’ll Be The Day stageshow rundown of big names from the 50’s to 80’s). The original is still massively loved, so this was always doomed to the “forgotten” pile and the one that should have topped the chart is the fabulous Caught In The Middle, a great move towards more mature pop that led to…breaking up. Bizarre. Ben Adams turned up in Eurovision (disguised) with the very catchy Norwegian entry by Subwoolfer, Give That Wolf A Banana. It really isn’t as bad as it sounds!
Caught in the Middle was good, yeah. I haven’t heard it in for decades, so may be completely wrong, but I think A1’s second number one might be a decent little pop song too.