a-ha — Take on Me

Back on the global charts after a month's absence, the Norwegian synth-pop landmark is broadly present again — tracked across 102 country and platform charts today. Its return coincides with the song's 40th-anniversary cycle, marked last year by a Washington Post feature on the band's complicated legacy, the personal disputes that have chilled the trio even as the track sustains its global ubiquity. The rotoscoped 1985 video — pencil-sketch romance bleeding into live action — remains one of the most-watched clips of the MTV era, and Morten Harket's leap into falsetto is still the melodic hook that carries it. The song's sync life runs deep, from Reel Big Fish's ska cover for BASEketball (1998) to the Sex and the City closing-credits homage catalogued on Tunefind. Four decades on, its chart durability barely wavers.