The Return

Return emerged as a Norwegian rock outfit in 1980 when it formed in Stange, Norway, around the core lineup of Knut Erik Østgård on vocals and guitar, Steinar Hagen on guitar and vocals, Tore Larsen on bass and vocals, and Øyvind Håkonsen on drums. The group achieved its greatest visibility during the late 1980s by riding a hair-metal sound that quickly lost favor once alternative rock took hold in the early 1990s. Several Top Ten singles, most of them power ballads, anchored its catalog, and after a long hiatus the members reconvened following the millennium, drawing sizable audiences to live shows. Their first taste of national attention arrived in 1985 via the single “Sheila,” which paved the way for the full-length debut To the Top in 1987; that album climbed into the Norwegian Top 20 and also featured “Sing Me a Song” alongside the earlier hit. Attitudes followed in 1988, rose as high as the Top Five, and yielded the Top Ten track “Change the Attitude.” Straight Down the Line appeared the next year and matched similar album-chart success while introducing the hit “Can You Forgive Me?,” and Fourplay in 1991 likewise landed in the Top Ten behind the single “Tell Me.” Although V from 1992 produced another major single in “Take This Heart,” the record itself peaked only at number 17 and signaled a steep decline in commercial fortunes, prompting the band to disband for the rest of the decade. In 2000 they resurfaced with the chart-topping retrospective The Best of Return, the concert document Return Live, and a series of reunion performances. Five years afterward they issued their first new studio collection in more than a decade, simply titled Return, yet the effort reached only the lower reaches of the Top 40 without generating notable singles. Another double-disc anthology, Best of...Both Worlds, surfaced in 2008.