Few sounds are more instantly recognisable than the synth riff a-ha's keyboardist Magne Furuholmen wrote at fifteen. Decades later, "Take On Me" remains the fifth most-streamed song of the twentieth century—a cultural touchstone that has outlasted every era it has passed through. Furuholmen reflects on what it took to break out of Norway at a time when the country was virtually unknown for pop music, and how a-ha rewrote the rules of what a small European country could achieve on the world stage.
But music is only part of the story. Furuholmen has sustained a parallel career as a visual artist whose work is held in institutions from the Norwegian State Archives to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and whose ceramic sculpture park Imprints is the largest of its kind in Scandinavia. He looks back on five extraordinary decades of making things that matter—and what artistic integrity looks like when the whole world is singing your chorus.
Interviewer: Kieron Tyler, Author, journalist and music historian