Train of Thought

The drums kick in with a sharp, almost military-style beat, and the bass traces a line that winds like an endless rail. “Train of Thought” doesn’t sound like an ’80s pop song—it sounds like a train car moving forward to an obsessive rhythm, where every note seems calculated to make the listener feel as though their very thoughts are accelerating. The detail lies in the bass, which doesn’t repeat a fixed pattern but flows in a sequence that stretches and contracts, as if the lyrics—that mix of anguish and lucidity—were written over those bars. It’s not a perfect loop, but one that breathes, as if each repetition carried a small, calculated error.

Pål Waaktaar wrote the lyrics by looking inward: he took verses from authors who influenced him—Gunvor Hofmo, Knut Hamsun, Fyodor Dostoevsky—and shaped them into a reflection on time and memory. Recorded in March 1986, it was the fourth track on *Hunting High & Low*, the album that launched them into the European mainstream. In the United Kingdom, the single reached number eight on the charts, cementing a-ha’s reputation as a trio that knew how to navigate the space between the melodic and the dark. In the United States, it didn’t have the same impact, but a 12-inch vinyl remix managed to make it onto the Hot Dance Club Play chart, proving that their sound could evolve without losing its essence. They sold half a million copies worldwide, and although it wasn’t their biggest commercial hit, today it remains a song that fans choose for how it sounds, not just for its history.