In which I talk, like a real Patrick Bateman, about a favorite 80s synth track, today: A-ha - Stay on These Roads
So that one hunky guy totally makes the wrong moves on the keyboard. He hammers chords, where we hear a baseline: single notes. I wonder whether it's smart dig at A-ha's criticasters that say they're no more than a hunky boyband.
Because they're not.
Or they totally are, just not *merely* that.
A-ha took a huge risk moving from Norway to the UK to pursue their music career (I read that one time but I can't seem to verify it now on wiki). They founded themselves and weren't formed by a producer looking to make money. They wrote their own music.
That's the history. But you can just hear it in this in this track. It sounds fully grown-up. I actually don't know what the lyrics are about, but it's obviously not about, for instance, puppy love. Just the the title carries gravitas: "Stay on These Roads".
So what else should I mention? Playing it just now I notice the track actually has a heavy guitar, you hear it right from the start of the track. And that's also not boy band like; for instance Depeche Mode never has that. Depeche Mode is an entertaining bad example, because that's the another 80s not-just-boyband boyband. The third one, then, is Duran Duran. Did real boybands even exist before the 90s? Before Take That? Help me out here.
If there's a single thing I have to pick that makes the track, that's actually easy: it's the high pitched singing. I suppose that's another thing that makes teenage girls swoon, but it's also a sound I just really love: male high-pitched singing. Also in classical, see Guillaume de Mauchet, for instance. That is a notable example, but in general I'll like a *untrained* high-pitched male voice better.
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