What's the best track on the first two a-ha albums?

"The Swing Of Thing" is the obvious pick here even though "Scoundrel Days", "October", "We're Looking For The Whales" and "The Weight Of The Wind" are all bloody fine too.

If I was to vote for a "Hunting High & Low" track, then "Train Of Thought" would be it.

lol you are teh geir!

How many people here have ever even heard anything other than "Take on Me" and "The Sun Always Shines on T.V."?

I've always quite liked "The Sun Always Shines on TV," arguably ripped off by U2's "Beautiful Day" (listen to the middle eight of the latter, contrast with intro to the former).

What's the one that goes "Wave goodbye, wave goodbye..you know" then goes all nirvana?

I think that the odds are pretty good that Rhydian from X Factor would do a cover of "The Sun Always Shines On TV".

I thought "Hunting High and Low" was reasonably well-known. It has a certain Nordic grandeur. It's good the way Horten's voice goes high when he sings "hiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh", then goes low when he sings "loooooowwwwwwww".

Oh yeah and "Cry Wolf" is quite famous too. Are all their songs in the same key?

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great poll

i voted for the swing of things

I'll second that.

Mark - that one's "Manhattan Skyline"

Ah yeah. Ta.

I was gonna say, "MANHATTAN SKYLINE 4 LIFE" but that would be silly.

I voted for that; it's the way Morten sings "a black and white PICture of Manhattan skyline" at the end which does it for me.

The whole of Scoundrel Days, with the possible exception of Cry Wolf, We're looking for.. and the Bacharach-y one on the second side (Maybe, Maybe ?) is totally genius and quite why no-one lauds this as one of the best albums of the 1980s is beyond me. I voted for The Swing of Things but its a really tough call.

All three of the songs you called out for dissing are also awesome, wtf.

X-Post. The most Bacharach-y track on "Scoundrel Days" is "October", which is on side 1, but damn great.

And I agree this is a masterpiece. Way better than "Hunting High And Low", and you may be interested to know that in Norway, it is often viewed as a better album, having performed better than "Hunting High And Low" in a couple of "Best Norwegian albums of all time" polls.

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Good top five, I can live with it.

Yeah, that would be my personal top 5.

"The Swing Of Things" is really their best song, but having it just below their two most well-known hits is surely acceptable. It was never a single, after all, and it isn't even on their most well-known album.

Good top five, I can live with it.

Ned, are you actually voting in these polls now??

God no. I was just observing.

Barry Walters wrote a lovely piece on music and mourning for a "Rock & Roll Quarterly" in the Voice. He devoted a paragraph to an a-ha song and mourned the song's (relative) obscurity. I want to say the song was "Manhattan Skyline." Does anyone remember this piece? I only heard "Manhattan Skyline" once and cannot find my copy of Scoundrel Days right now. Is it a song about mourning? Or could it help one who is mourning?