Take On Me - a-ha

The iconic 1985 music video utilized a painstaking rotoscoping technique where animators traced over live-action footage of the band frame by frame, a process that took over 16 weeks to complete. Directors Steve Barron and Michael Patterson blended this pencil-sketch animation with live-action reality to create the legendary effect.

Lead vocalist Morten Harket famously hits an incredibly high sustained note at the end of the chorus, reaching an E5 in falsetto. This demanding vocal range has made the song notoriously difficult for amateur and professional singers alike to cover accurately.

While the famous animated video launched the song to global stardom in 1985, earlier versions of the track were recorded and released in 1984. The initial releases flopped, prompting the label to remix the song and commission the famous video that eventually hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

The video tells a romantic fantasy story featuring a-ha's lead singer Morten Harket as a comic book character, and a young woman reading the comic in a diner played by actress Bunty Bailey. The narrative sparked a sequel video for the band's follow-up hit "The Sun Always Shines on T.V."