Top 40 Morten Harket Quotes

Although I would like to describe the perfect day, I can’t. Because a perfect day is one where there is no plan.

I feel very strong about ‘Brother.’ This is me. I’ve been writing with a much more free sky, open and free.

I do respond to the ideas behind the Eurovision and ‘The X Factor,’ but they’re both so limiting and very, very shallow.

A-ha is not me, Paul, or Magne: it is its own individual that has its own identity and characteristics. It is a result of a particular meeting point between the three of us.

We wanted the freedom to be playful, to experiment and do what we felt like doing, but we were heavily affected by the success that the first record gave us.

We wanted to come to London because it’s the hardest place to make it.

We knew we would make it and become very big.

I’d known since I was 17 that I was going to be a star. It was a strange feeling but a very real one.

My younger brother was a big Stoke fan, and I was sucked into it. I was kind of waking up every morning and looking at Gordon Banks’ face! We had all these small football cards – literally hundreds of them – and swapping them was the currency back then.

I am naturally prone to fun or to be funny, but when I talk about myself in interviews, then it’s an intellectual exercise.

We ceased to be a band the moment we made it. It left us with nothing. We felt like a failure although we had commercial success.

I actually do sing sometimes.

What you look like doesn’t matter as much as what you feel like. If you feel you look good, you look good. And I never felt that.

We sent a guy called Terry Slater a couple of demos, using the last of our money. And then things turned. He landed us a deal with Warners and said just keep coming up with songs, because when success hits you, you won’t even know your name.

The video was of paramount importance, because ‘Take on Me’ was not an instant hit.

We became such darlings of a certain type of media. We became a package; we became easy to sell: these three golden nuggets that could pour out all the goods. It was all exposure in an almost violent way.

People think the chorus is the hard part in ‘Take on Me,’ but they’re wrong. The hard part was making the verses bounce.

We were never a boy band. We always had much more to offer than that, I thought.

When we were kids, Stoke was massive in Norway.

I do love beauty. I love beautiful tilings. I grow orchids and collect butterflies. But when it comes to relationships, you have to find the person inside.

Since I travel so much, my perfect Sunday would start by waking up at home with my partner Inez. We’d have breakfast with our little girl Karmen, maybe in our garden.

I’m not an entertainer; I’m an engager. I never sell myself, in a sense.

When you’re at war with yourself, you will go under.

I love just being in the sphere of nothingness looking inwards.

I didn’t feel like I fitted in. I felt like I was a hindrance to A-ha.

We make music that we believe in. That’s all it is.

We had to leave Norway and go where it was all happening, which was London. We loved it there, but it was hard. We had no money – we were literally starving. It started to get ugly.

People have a wild response to something, and they want it. Sometimes people lose themselves.

Mind you, the limelight exists anywhere in the world. When you’re not in the U.K., it can be as active somewhere else in the world, and for me, that’s more or less been the case, so I never dropped out of the limelight in that sense.

You can love someone and not like them.

We got sick of interviews and performances – for a long time, it came back to doing ‘Take on Me.’ It became a circus number instead of music.

I had always wanted to make music on a big scale but never knew how it was going happen – until I saw a band in Oslo called Bridges. I was stunned. They had everything. The only thing they didn’t have was me. I knew I needed to join, not for my own sake but for the band’s. I knew I was a necessary ingredient.

You have to remember, videos were on the rise back when we did ‘Take On Me.’

For a lot of fans from the early days, they probably had issues they were A-ha fans, because it probably wasn’t ‘cool.’

We didn’t feel we fitted into the ’80s.

I can choose to be a serious musician, but the sex symbol part is not up to me.

I never liked the term ‘fans.’

I’m attracted to people who are older rather than younger, and all ages have their potential and limitations.

Anything can be interesting as long as you access it from the right angle.

The pin-up thing took us completely by surprise. I found it hard because I got singled out, and I didn’t like it. There was a lot of disillusionment.