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ABBA - The Album

Back in the day I bought one ABBA album, and it was their 1981 swansong (okay, they've since released Voyage, but it's after their best-before date so I'm not counting it, even though I bought it), The Visitors, and for me that was enough. Of course I'd end up with a couple of best-of CDs and a few of their other albums. Then my daughter went through her Mamma Mia phase, and a decade later we had to watch Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, which had stretched things pretty thin as I thought they'd more or less used up their best songs in the first one. That, and it looked like Cher would break if she moved too quickly.

I never really went through an anti-ABBA phase, and I liked a lot of their songs - but I didn't go out of my way to broadcast this to my friends. Apparently they were often categorized as disco, but they were just vanilla pop that didn't offend your parents. However, as I'm listening to this, my wife yells downstairs, "Honey, are you on a disco kick? First the Bee Gees, now ABBA?" I shout back, "No! They aren't disco, you just don't understand!" Then I slam the door and petulantly sit on the floor and listen to the rest of the record - but I couldn't stay mad. Darn you, ABBA, for being so cheery.

The Album was a pretty nifty find for a dollar. It still had the shrinkwrap and liner notes and everything. Based on the two big songs, this was already worth my buck. It could be fun discovering what else was under the hood. Part of me was hoping for a train wreck equal to "Pick a Bale of Cotton"/"On Top of Old Smokey"/"Midnight Special" (medley) that showed up as a bonus track on a CD - if you've not heard this, you're missing out. It's amazingly horrific.

"Eagle" leads off the album and is really good, but it's the next one, "Take a Chance on Me," that was the big hit, and rightly so. It's a great track. The first side closes out with the other big song, "The Name of the Game." The one song I wasn't familiar with was "One Man, One Woman," which was pretty good and musically full of the bombastic grandeur you expect in an ABBA love song. So far, the album is really good.

The second side is more new territory. The only song I've heard before is "Thank You for the Music," so there's still a chance I'll get my bale of cotton moment. Fingers crossed. Oh, it's close. Bjorn narrates the start of "Move On." I swear he's put on a western drawl, and it's got those "Fernando" trilling flutes or whatever they are. I'm not sure where I sit with this one, but it was silly fun. "Hole in Your Soul" reminded me a little of "Waterloo" - not sure why, they're really nothing alike. Decent enough, and the rest of the album is enjoyable but nothing that really stands on its own - maybe after a few more spins.

The last three songs are from The Girl with the Golden Hair - three scenes from a mini-musical - "Thank You for the Music," "I Wonder (Departure)," and it closes with "I'm a Marionette." Yeah, these are show tunes. Well, I'm going to embrace the unknown here and just let myself enjoy the rest of the album. I can't be too hard on this stuff, after all. I have South Pacific and Porgy and Bess on vinyl, so it's not like I can just wash these songs right out of my ears (bonus marks if you sang that in your head). They may not have been the three best songs on the album, but as a piece, this is my favourite part of the album.

ABBA really just did what they wanted on their terms, and when they were good, they were exceptional, and that gave them the leeway to venture off and do whatever they wanted to do. If they wanted to have Bjorn put on an accent, he could put on an accent, and if they wanted to do a mini-musical, they'd do that too. Why not? If they were just about trying to be with the current trends and churn out songs like sausages, they'd have gone full disco. After all, it was 1977 and the Bee Gees were killing it, and they could have just done more variations of "Dancing Queen" and raked it in. But to them, that wasn't the name of the game.

 

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