Episode 26: Creating a-ha's "lost sixth album"

“What are we gonna do? I don’t know, create it

”Dear a-ha friends,It’s hard to conceive it… but sometimes we feel like doing something other than ranking. And so we did this time! We’ve stepped into our very own time machine and set it to late summer 1996.

In this imaginary world, a-ha are getting ready to create and record their sixth album, the follow-up to 1993’s Memorial Beach. To help the guys along, Jesper and JP have chosen the 12 songs to go on the album. But not only that: Peter the Producer has made sure the songs on the album are sequenced in the best way possible to create the optimal album flow. Is it a good album? You bet!

The specific criteria for the selection of songs are explained in the podcast, and as per usual it’s quite simple, but JP manages to make it sound very complex. Meanwhile, Jesper is getting a musical deep tissue massage from a song, Peter is waiting for a movie version of JP’s new book, and JP tries to find a link to Joan Osborne. And there’s also a song that is a prune…

We also learn that Jesper cannot count to two, and JP doesn’t know what an octave is. And none of us know what the thing you use to mute the sound of a trumpet is called. There are also stories of scaring an IT guy away from attending a Savoy concert, and Jesper shares his unfiltered feelings about collaborations in music. And perhaps Peter has some interesting chart news from 1997, while JP aaaaalmost doesn’t talk about his book (which you can order here: www.linktr.ee/lessonone).

So, as always, there’s a lot going on when we get together. Actually, this time, so much that we perhaps got overly enthusiastic and maxed out the volume, which has caused some of the sound to become slightly muffled. But what can you expect after 25 episodes? Next time we’ll see if we can hire Alan Tarney.

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All the best,

JP, Jesper and Peter the Producer

“New albums belong to the past / Only a fool would expect them to last”