Songfacts®:

• Pal Waaktaar, a-ha's guitarist and writer of this song is quoted in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh as saying: "The Sun Always Shines On TV was written on one of those down days. Me and Mags (Furuholmen, keyboards) were in a hotel watching English television on a rainy day and the guy announcing the program says, 'It's a rainy day but, as always, the sun always shines on TV.' The song is about the power of television and the way television presents life."
• The video continues the story of the "Take On Me" video. At the beginning, Morten Harket turns back into a comic book character and then it shows television-like credits. >>

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• Andrew Wickham, the Warner Bros. A&R exec who signed the band to the label, listened to his secretary when she said the tune would be a hit. "She convinced him to make room for it," Waaktaar explained. But the sun wasn't shining on the band when it came time to record. "When we recorded it, we were really sick with influenza. Magne and Morten were lying in the studio on camping beds with high fevers."
• This was used in the trailer for the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire.
• This won two trophies at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1986: Best Editing in a Video (for editor David Yardley) and Best Cinematography in a Video (for Director of Photography Oliver Stapleton).
• A live version was recorded for a-ha's 2003 album, How Can I Sleep with Your Voice in My Head.
• The band performed this at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in 1998.
• The chorus on "The Sun Always Shines On T.V." was originally a last-minute middle-8 on a tune Paul Waaktaar-Savoy was working on called "Never Never."
  
  "Putting bits of songs together that come from different places often provides a great lift or adds a dimension you wouldn't have stumbled upon otherwise," he told American Songwriter.