2000 A1: Take On Me

Well it's nice work if you can get it. Or get away with it - 'Take On Me' is a cover version of a-ha's uber eighties number two hit (in 1985) by Anglo/Norwegian boyband A1. And when I say 'cover version', I mean that a few 'updated' William Orbit style gooey-wooey bleeps aside, it's note perfect identical. A1 provide sound but no heart and serve up a vanilla plate of water thin gruel that's to the gutsy ambience of the original what a cheap Poundstore poster reproduction is to an original Constable. All very depressing, but not as depressing as the thought of this being bought by a generation not even born when a rotoscope Morten Harket was pulling Bunty Bailey into his comic book world - if TS Eliot measured out his life in coffee spoons then I measure mine by the relative age of those around me to iconic events from my past. As I say, all very depressing.