Hunting High and Low - A-ha

This phenomenal band from Norway released "Hunting High and Low" as their debut album back in 1985 and it is in my opinion one of the truly great albums from the 1980's. The first single "Take On Me" hit number one all over the world, 36 countries to be exact selling 9 million copies and earning the band a Grammy Award nomination as Best New Artist in 1986. In addition to the songs success I think the video to Take On Me is perhaps the best ever produced, and I don't just mean in the 80's either. The video is absolutely astounding, it used a pencil-sketch animation/ live action combination called Rotoscoping (where individual frames of live video are drawn over or colored). The video would become one of the most instantly recognizable and most enduringly popular videos of all time and it still received regular play even today. The rest of the album is equally impressive, there is no fill on this record at all, it is pretty much perfect. There were no less than 5 singles that charted both in North America and in Europe, in addition to Take On me, "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." , "Love Is Reason", "Train of Thought" and "Hunting High and Low" also fared very well. With regards to financial success I for the most part believed that sales don't always tell the full story ( sometimes they don't mean shit ) but on some occassions they can be an indication as to the merits of a particular work. In end Hunting High and Low went on to sell 10 million units worldwide.