First video The first release of "Take On Me" in 1984 includes a completely different recording; this mix was featured in the first video, which shows the band singing with a blue background.
Second video in a scene from the music video, which features them in a pencil-sketch animation / live-action combination (
rotoscoping).|alt= The second video, directed by film director
Steve Barron, is the far more widely recognised video for the song. It was filmed in 1985 at Kim's
cafe, which is located on the corner of Wandsworth Road and Pensbury Place in
Wandsworth, southwest London, and on a sound stage in London. The cafe scenes feature the English actress
Bunty Bailey, who became a-ha singer Morton Harket's girlfriend following the shoot. Approximately 3,000 frames were rotoscoped, which took 16 weeks to complete. The idea of the video was suggested by
Warner Bros. executive
Jeff Ayeroff, who was pivotal in making "Take on Me" a globally recognised music hit. The music video was remastered to
2160p (4K) in 2019 from the original
35mm film and released on
YouTube, while retaining its original URL and upload date of 6 January 2010. The remaster also contains new sound effects (revving motorbikes etc.) not featured on the original clip. On 17 February 2020, the music video reached one billion views on YouTube. Prior to that date, only four songs from the 20th century had reached that mark ("
November Rain" and "
Sweet Child o' Mine" by
Guns N' Roses, "
Smells Like Teen Spirit" by
Nirvana, and "
Bohemian Rhapsody" by
Queen)—making "Take On Me" the fifth video from that time period to do so, and the first Scandinavian act to achieve this. By 20 September 2024, the music video had received 2 billion views on YouTube, making it the first music video from the 1980s to achieve this milestone. In 2019, Morten Harket and Bunty Bailey reunited at the cafe in Wandsworth where part of the video was shot (known as the Savoy cafe in 2019, and the Turkish Chef Mediterranean Restaurant in 2025), 34 years after the video was made.
Plot The video's main theme is a romantic fantasy narrative. It begins with a montage of pencil drawings in a comic-book style representing motorcycle
sidecar racing, in which the hero (Morten Harket) is pursued by two opponents (
Philip Jackson and
Alfie Curtis). In a café, a young woman (
Bunty Bailey) is reading the comic book depicting the race. As she reads, the waitress brings her coffee and the bill. The comic's hero, after winning the race, seemingly winks at the woman from the page. His pencil-drawn hand suddenly reaches out of the comic book, inviting the woman into it. Once inside, she too appears in the pencil-drawn form as he sings to her and introduces her to his black-and-white world which features a sort of looking-glass portal where people and objects look real on one side and pencil-drawn on the other. Back in the café, the waitress returns to find the woman missing. Believing the customer
left without paying the bill, she angrily crumples the comic book and throws it into a bin. This causes the hero's two opposing racers to reappear as villains, one of them armed with a large
pipe wrench. The racers smash the looking glass with the pipe wrench, trapping the woman in the comic book. The hero punches one of the thugs aside and retreats with the woman into a maze of paper. Arriving at a dead end, he tears a hole in the paper wall so that the woman can escape. He remains in the comic book as the opposing racers menacingly close in on him. The woman, now back in the real world and found lying beside the trash bin to the surprise and confusion of café guests and staff, retrieves the comic from the bin and runs home. She attempts to smooth out the creases of the crumpled pages in order to read what happens next. The next panel shows the hero, lying seemingly lifeless, and the woman begins to cry. However, he then wakes up and tries to break out of his comic-book frames. At the same time, his image appears in the woman's hallway, seemingly torn between real and comic form, hurling himself repeatedly left-and-right against the walls; eventually falling to the floor in his attempts to shatter his two-dimensional barrier. (This scene is largely patterned after a climactic scene in the 1980 film
Altered States.
Awards At the
1986 MTV Video Music Awards, the video for "Take On Me" won six awards—
Best New Artist in a Video,
Best Concept Video,
Most Experimental Video,
Best Direction in a Video,
Best Special Effects in a Video, and
Viewer's Choice—and was nominated for two others,
Best Group Video and
Video of the Year. It was also nominated for Favorite Pop/Rock Video at the
13th American Music Awards in 1986. The second music video was produced by Limelight Productions. editor Richard Simpson from Rushes Film Editing, and animators
Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger.
Volkswagen created a television advertisement inspired by the video. The video was also one of the first to be made into a so-called
literal music video. The visuals of the video were used as an homage for
Paramore's music video for "
Caught in the Middle". In 2021,
Rolling Stone listed "Take On Me" at number 14 on their list of the 100 greatest music videos. In September 2025, At the BMI London Awards 2025, a-ha's "Take On Me" was among those recognized for reaching 10 million plays on US radio. == Chart performance ==