Episode 19: Ranking the Magne album 'Living With Ourselves'

“You’re hoping for rankings / Well, just look around / Everyone here is standing in line”

Dear a-ha friends,It’s time we made good on our promise to record a new episode of ‘a-ha: Ranking Highs and Lows’ - as far as we know the world’s only (and therefore arguably: best) podcast solely dedicated to the wonderful music of a-ha and their related solo projects. And this episode is of course a ranking of the songs from Magne’s new album ‘living with ourselves’ (and in case anyone is wondering: Yes, every cell in our bodies screams for us to begin the words with capital letters, but we can’t argue with artists, can we? Maybe we can).

Anyway, it’s not a secret that we are rather fond of ‘living with ourselves’ so if you decided to press Play on this episode hoping to listen to three angry middle-aged men (us, not a-ha), you’ll be unpleasantly surprised. However, you will get to hear about currency exchange rates, Peter the Producer’s sneaky musical adventures as a young boy, a conversation at work that maybe robbed Jesper of a treasured item, and the idea for a band called “a-heatles” and a single called “Gospel from a Beatle”.

We also speculate what it takes for a Magne to be a John, if 400.000 NOK is enough to send three people to Southern France to record an album, and how much time a-ha owes us back. We also talk a little about Depeche Mode, Babybird, Sting, and Tom Waits, and we talk a fair bit about a-ha and of course a lot about Magne.

We hope you’ll like the episode and that it might even inspire a few of you who haven’t listened to the album yet - or only a few times - to give it some more spins (or streams, probably).

And as always: we appreciate all the comments we get from you guys and guysettes so keep ‘em coming. Please also make sure to like, subscribe, share and whatever else it takes to become friends with the algorithm.

We’ll surely find something else to rank eventually - this is a year to celebrate after all - so we’ll certainly be back. Until then!

All the best,

JP, Jesper and Peter the Producer


“Your life is a podcast / The rankings are you”