Don't go wasting all your ballots/Lay all your votes on me -- ILM Artist Poll #20 -- ABBA (voting thread)

Done & sent. No idea how many of mine were singles, tbh it feels like they all were.

Coincidence? http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/18/abba-beatles-queen-sales-league

Obvious "Put On Your White Sombrero" is gonna take this.

I'll be interested to see how many songs not on Gold or More Gold make the top ten.

If I can get my shit together to formulate a ballot, I *will* be voting for Tiger

I know everyone probably knows this but the video is totally worth it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWQ7wrPyUe0

If I can get my shit together to formulate a ballot, I *will* be voting for Tiger

Pat Benatar's career in 2:56.

haha

i'd like to encourage people to vote for stuff aside from the big hits because they have such a strong back catalog and the results might be more interesting that way. here is "should i laugh or cry?"

"Should I Laugh or Cry" will be in my Top 20, no worries there, however their hits are so damned good it's hard to vote for anything else. I like all of their hit singles, except "I Have a Dream", which is shite

yeah Tiger's amazing and kinda scary too, definitely in my Top 10. other classic deep cuts that could all have been singles imo

If It Wasn't For The Nights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xfKqxdv3Gk

So Long

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbRB2Cjr_Wo

As Good As New

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxFLvZrWlmM

You Owe Me One is my deep cut of choice. It was put on tape for the 9th album that never came and ended up the b-side of "Under Attack". One of the final things they ever recorded as a band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQy8D8APo9E

The deepest I'll probably go are "King Kong Song" and "When I Kissed The Teacher" - - - I'm kind of an ABBA dilettante but I think I probably still have twenty beloved cuts.

btw if anyone does NOT know "When I Kissed The Teacher," put it on repeat STAT, it is top three easily

yeah an amazing bit of work that, although it's never been the same for me since i realised that it sounds like she's saying 'When I Kissed The T-Shirt'.

/i'd like to encourage people to vote for stuff aside from the big hits because they have such a strong back catalog and the results might be more interesting that way. here is "should i laugh or cry?"/

"Should I Laugh or Cry" will be in my Top 20, no worries there, however their hits are so damned good it's hard to vote for anything else. I like all of their hit singles, except "I Have a Dream", which is shite

My deep cut of choice is "Just Like That" -- never finished and turned into some song on Chess I believe. But the snippet on the "Undeleted" medley (and heard on various YouTubes) is absolutely one of my favorite things by them.

i really love the gemini version of "just like that", which (iirc?) is a good deal sadder-sounding than ABBA's (warning tho: xxxtreme 80s production)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHUHKNKbVqE

oh I am so doing this! "Waterloo" and "Fernando" are two of the best songs of the 70s afaic, and I have wanted an excuse to explore deeper for a minute. I am going to spend all week digging deep into their albums on Spotify!

Anyone else going to vote for this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2APDCyVZ2zA

Has to be one of the strangest songs they did but I've always loved it.

omg those shirts
LOVE

oh btw i just realized i'm going to be out of town this weekend until monday night so i think we can extend the voting to the night of monday, may 28 instead?

keep ballots coming guys!! i only have a smattering so far

probably should have done "best 3 ABBA outfits" instead of "best 3 albums"...

oh btw i just realized i'm going to be out of town this weekend until monday night so i think we can extend the voting to the night of monday, may 28 instead?

^yay!

yeah i am gonna need some time too
but i feel the need to honor my early childhood favorite band
monday it is

yeah I have to do some spotifying and press my satin jumpsuit

3 tracks into Ring Ring and i realise this is gonna be impossible

― Vermicious Knid A (Noodle Vague), Friday, May 18, 2012 7:29 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

3rd track of Ring Ring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sktO-fEKfo4

OMG

this IS going to be impossible isnt it?

YOW-ZA!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92L6balksi8

wow the Waterloo album is amazing!

I am listening to the albums in chronological order on Spotify, and I am also doing a sort of 'liveblog'/write-up of them. If you want/don't mind, donna rouge, I can post them here...

Did this poll include their best albums? You should post them in the results poll if so.

Results thread that is.

well i'm doing it song-by-song

go nuts, LLB

also interested parties might wanna check out this week's onion av club xword

Right, my ballot is in. Some of the songs I left off, I should be ashamed of myself, oy!

Alright, I'm p ignorant about ABBA though (can't tell Agnetha's and Anni-Frida's voices apart tbrr)--before Tuesday, I probably had heard only five ABBA songs in my life, so hopefully this won't come off as totally stupid.

First Album: Ring Ring--the album they released even before they stumbled upon the name ABBA; I think original printings refer to it as Bjorn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid

Ring Ring - wikipedia says that this song was rejected by Melodifestivalen to compete in the 1973 Eurovision contest. It sounds very modern; the mechanized c&w bounce seems to turn into a punk/indie trope later on (Suicide's "Johnny", Dead Skeletons' "Psychodead", even to some extent Bowie's "Move On") I love how the bridge is only drums and vocals (have not yet learned how to tell the two women apart yet)--very "Hey Mickey!"--and I love how the chorus takes an out-of-nowhere left turn into the "I sit all alone impatiently" part without flagging momentum a bit, and I love how the honky-tonk guitar flourishes manage to call to mind my favorite Roxy Music song "If There is Something." This is going to be great!

Another Town, Another Train - Man, they loved to roll out the piccolo carpet. "Guess I will spend my life in railway stations" is a line that cuts deep.

Disillusion - "I know it doesn't matter just how hard I try..." Oh, man. After the chorus, Agnetha (who receives a co-songwriting credit, the only she'll get in ABBA) goes through another half-verse before taking another round at the chorus, and that seems to be a motif with this album: trying to gauge how to make the most of a hook, or the peak of a song. Trying to master the way a song can push and pull at the listener without lapsing into formula. I think I might love this song. (Note: I would go on to listen to this song about fourteen or fifteen more times that day)

People Need Love - Everybody sings! But seriously: this song reminds me a wee bit of the refrain for "A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock'n'Roll" (though not nearly as dinky as all that), but it definitely has that '70s garish showbiz maximalism about it, a whiff of the sitcom variety-show spectacle to it. Not that it comes as a surprise. Best part of this was definitely the girls' mentalist yodelling that accompanied the song's fade-out. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, this song was the first hit for the quartet, recorded with the four of them almost as a lark, and it was this success that made them decide to record an album as a group.

I Saw It in the Mirror - I have found that I am decidedly less invested in songs where the guys take lead vocals. I do, however, think this is solid. The slow-burn funk arrangements lend the sad-sack lyrics and melody some class, but obviously its at the end of the verses--when the women pop out of nowhere to do a call-and-response out of "when this boy cries"--that really rewards the decision not to fast-forward through this track. No chorus here, though it's not really missed; just a lush breakdown with the women actual taking (their rightful place) front-and-center for the only time in this song...

Nina, Pretty Ballerina - This is aite. The arrangement is interesting: the unassuming, almost hidden, staccato rockabilly-style guitar part helps to ground it, while the sixteenth notes played on the piano during the chorus helps to add that sort of precious, music-box quality that I tend to associate with ABBA. And what are those little sharp sounds at the end of each verse? Is that a synthesizer sound, a la "Ring My Bell", or is it just some small exhortation uttered/sang by one of the women? Also: lots of sound effects. Lots of stuff going on in here for what would just seem ike a light pop throwaway. Lyrics establish a popular motif: they sketch out the titular character, an ordinary-looking woman whom everyone thinks is a bore, but who on Friday night transforms into 'the queen of the dancing floor.' You don't say.

Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure is Hard Enough) - Lots of stuff going on here as well. To be honest, this sounds like a Waterloo precursor to me. Those descending female verses (sorry I'm still not quite good at distinguishing between Agnetha and Anni-Frida) that storm into the song with attending electric guitars, threatening its bouncy good nature, are the first glimmers of the glam rock sensibility that would help ABBA win the Eurovision contest next year. The chorus reinforces and accentuates the boogie, absorbing the momentary sturm und drang, and you can already see Bjorn & Benny putting the pieces together, figuring out how forward-charging protopunk can be both contrasted and at the same time curbed by a good old-fashioned R&B dance beat.

Me and Bobby and Bobby's Brother - Song comes in strong with a jaunty, dynamic chorus sung by everyone, which for some reason causes me to believe that this is going to be another "guys' song" but apparently this is (I think...?) Anni-Frida singing about a woman remembering her childhood friends, both boys. Some interesting thing going on w/r/t gender here: in the male-augmented chorus, the narrator's childhood is sketched out as more tomboyish ("Wildest kids you could see...climbing the apple tree") but the verses paint her as more feminine (she doesn't like it when Bobby and his brother want to play football). Though actually, she sings the 'apple tree' line by herself, so maybe I am way off here.

He is Your Brother - Opens with some great guitar, and the chorus has some embryonic hints of "S.O.S." along with that pre-Waterloo bounce, slowed down as if to see if it would make it more forceful. This aspect of the song almost reminds me of Badfinger's "Come and Get It" or something.

She's My Kind of Girl - A song with loads of history: written in '69 for the Swedish softcore movie The Seduction of Inga (which was re-released on DVD somewhat recently on the retro wing of the production company which gave us The Erotic Witch Project and Spider-babe), the song was released as a Bjorn & Benny single in 1970 and that version hit to #1 in Japan in 1972. As for The song? To be honest, it sounds even earlier than that. The chorus has a Hollies feel to it; if it wasn't for the prominent rhythm section, it would not sound out of place on a Nuggets-type compilation. Its incongruity with the rest of the album almost makes it seem like a stand-out.

I Am Just a Girl - Gwen Stefani, call your lawyers. Nah, just kidding. That's a recycled Mission of Burma/Eddie Vedder joke anyways. This song has me torn. It's a great slice of lush, floaty cloud-pop, frothy and effortless and unencumbered like I want School of Seven Bells to be, but at the same time the whole 'girl gets self worth from her man' theme is wearying. Maybe I should give it a pass--you know, 1973 and all--but this song is kind of like the antithesis of "Disillusion", for my money the best song on here. And while it is a does offer a great catchy/ethereal hybrid, I feel like considering the subtext--the men wrote these songs and then got their wives to sing them--it's really hard to make something like this wash. (apparently this is dleone's choice for most disturbing ABBA song; maybe I should replace 'unencumbered' with 'lobotomized')

Rock and Roll Band - This, on the other hand, might be my favorite of the "guys' songs" (which I guess are pretty much peculiar to this album only...?), and it might have my favorite guitar solos of the album. It is a bit more upbeat than other songs, not really girded by the chunky bounce of many of the other songs. It does have a more straightforward rock vibe, but at the same time it has a sort of twinge of melancholy to it. This is a good album closer.

Merry-Go-Round - Hey, how about some bonus tracks? This one starts out with a folkie Renaissance-Faire vibe to the verses before falling into that familiar bounce (tired of me typing that word yet?) though this time it has a bit of that aforementioned c&w vibe, like in "Ring Ring"

Santa Rosa - This is great; surprisingly, too since there's no sign of the women unfortunately, but Bjorn & Benny offer up some clavicle-soaked California-style bubblegum. I really like the psych-flavored pastiches sprinkled throughout the early stuff.

"Love Isn't Easy" is a massive tune for me, is it a deep cut? i never know anymore but dammit it bangs and bangs.

i sincerely want to vote for this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM9ueSWj3ig

but i won't. ignore the idiot who labelled it "ABBA SPOOF" this is a beautiful tribute

i mean, that IS a spoof, but an extremely faithful one

like even down to the awkward english idioms

yeah i guess i feel "spoof" is kinda faint praise, the chorus is properly gorgeous

Love Isn't Easy" is a massive tune for me, is it a deep cut? i never know anymore but dammit it bangs and bangs.

― Cyders from Mars (Noodle Vague), Thursday, May 24, 2012 3:26 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for real! probably my second favorite song off Ring Ring

y'all have convinced me that listening to the "full album" youtube is inadequate and i need to go out and see if i can find a copy of Ring Ring and/or Waterloo, today!

Dr Casino, both are on Spotify fyi

dude listen to Waterloo right now!

i listened to both the other day! they were good! I WNAT LPS

good point tbh

I've never been keen on the Waterloo or Ring Ring albums, apart from the singles from them. The ABBA story begins proper for me with the ABBA album (which is definitely my favourite record of theirs). From then up until The Visitors, I'd only really call the Voulez-Vous album a slight dip.

Meh. I don't agree. Waterloo and the selftitled albums are p much my favorite. Waterloo has the title track, "My Mama Said" (which is likely top 5 for me) and "Watch Out" at the very least. Plus I love the Wall-of-Sound production. Selftitled is almost as good. The later albums I've had a harder time getting into so far.

Tbh I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm the wrong person to do this write-up, since the stuff that I think lots of fans like leave me cold. But I mostly want this to drum up interest for this poll, and being completely RONG might work in that capacity.

Actually, third album is probably my favorite too.

They didn't have 'em and I just shuffled on to the grocery store. :(

ugh, i doubt i'm going to be able to become expert enough on these albums to give a vote not 85% driven by greatest hits vol. 1/2, man these cats had some great album tracks though!

Crazy World - The first bonus track is a male-sung ballad which may or may not bring the o_0: I wasn't listening really closely, but the impression I got was that in order to keep his cheating wife from leaving him, he invites his brother in the house to ball with her, and then he looks the other way, pretending the whole thing isn't happening. But I could likely be wrong!

hahahaha this is great, unfortunately this is not actually the twist ending to this song but yours would be much better than the corny one they picked. Meanwhile, them doing "Pick a Bale of Cotton" is just O_o although I guess I basically admire the idea of music to earworm its way into really remote cultural contexts.

keep em coming folks! tonight's the deadline!

and thanks to all who have been discussing stuff, i've been a fairly absent moderator this whole time

Thanks for running this. Sadly (mercifully?) I will not be getting all the albums' rundowns done by the end of the night. I will probably continue to work on them throughout the next week though.

Fourth Album - Arrival. ABBA goes synthpop, sweeps disco off its feet.

When I Kissed the Teacher - A brisk acoustic guitar starts this album off, then the girls' vocals, with their thick Scandinavian accents out front, much more noticeable then I remember them being, at least since the first album. This is some effortless pop, pulled along by a synthetic, almost Teutonic, chug, with the chorus changing it up with some funk/disco bass. ABBA was krautrock! J/k (for now). This song pelts hooks at the listener from every possible angle, like the world's most lopsided dodgeball game. They've really nailed this whole layering thing down.

Dancing Queen - I'm not going to insult your intelligence by pretending I have anything novel to say about this song, ABBA's most universally known and loved hit, the one song of theirs that is the welcome guest at any wedding reception. I mean, obviously it's ravishing, in a way that hasn't really worn away. Those who decry it for being schmaltz ignore the fact that schmaltz is a crucial ingredient in safeguarding against the wear and tear of overplay. Jeered at in its heyday, especially by those who love an easy target, as a corny pop hit, it is precisely that corn that. as time passes, can help it embody an irretrievable past, a lost innocence that never really existed but is all the more poignant for its cheap deceit. Of course their disco visions of dancing queens were fake, but they sell it with enough conviction that we don't have to struggle to believe and therefore can use it to mourn the youths that we, often as not, hated living through the first time. And that sort of universality of effect, almost utilitarian, is exactly what the preterite masses has over the critical elite. Anyway, um: Dancing Queen is a song. You've heard it before. It's good.

My Love, My Life - ABBA is like the Henry James of pop music. I remember reading something by Wallace Stegner about how the Master was constantly refining his approach, using his technical versatility to clear whatever obstructions that the narrative posed. ABBA does the same with songwriting, constantly pushing forward, even after hitting perfection. The last album's "I've Been Waiting for You" was a dizzying apex in their developing balladcraft. This song is similar to that one, with the cool synthesizers (which I am starting to suspect are going to dominate this album) stirring refrains, and legitimate grandeur, though this one is more grounded, lacking the vertiginous thrust of the other, trading for a more emotional urgency, a steadily growing emphasis every time the chorus reappears. It's really good, but I'm not sure I have room for both this and "I've Been Waiting For You" on my ballot.

Dum Dum Diddle - I'm starting to get a sinking feeling that this album is going to have no glam-rock in it. There is a nicely frenzied synth part that starts the song and keeps being repeated, but the stuff in between is just goofy carefree kiddie bounce-pop. This sounds like a Ring Ring outtake, which is not such a bad thing, but they couldn't bring in some hot glitter instead.

Knowing Me, Knowing You - Haha, so I'm not the first person to notice that the real hook in this is that little 'Ah-hah!' that comes at the end of the 'knowing me, knowing you' phrase. It's pretty brilliant. a little twist of sexiness in what is essentially a break-up song. And here's one of the many facets of ABBA's genius. Their music sets up a context of care and craftsmanship and musical sophistication, and yet they still have an incredible knack for those immortal throwaway gestures Pop stars through and through, they knew exactly when and how to puncture the earnest heartache with a sly come-on, or how to enhance it with seductive call-and-response breathiness. There really isn't anything about the song I don't like. Is that a flanged electric piano in the first verse? Whatever it is, it adds a psychedelic flavor to a song that can't help but refuse to dwell on its own heartbreak. Great song!

Money Money Money - Wow, this is about ten times more theatrical than "Mamma Mia" (though dig the disco beat). I'm not a huge fan of its excess, though it's hilariously great how the lead-in to the chorus reminds me of the Oompa-Loompa songs ("You'll get no commercials!"). Still this kind of thing is not my bag.

It's Me - This is okay at first. There's some awesome synthesizer, and the beat is infectious, and the song goes through some very cool melodic twists, but for some reason it's all less than the sum of its parts. Something about the way the song rushes through the "I'm Carrie, not the kind of girl you'd marry" part, when that's precisely the time to hit hard with a great hook, that kind of robs it of memorability. Lots of fine window dressing, but a bit soulless imo.

Why Does It Have to be Me? - Here's a rock song! ABBA has the whole European sing-songy take on overtly bluesy material down. The best example of this (so far) is "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" but this doesn't really sound like a copycat of that. But it falls short of classic.

Tiger - I was looking forward to this song, to be honest, and it's...okay. It does have some glimmer of the glitter I was looking for. But to these ears, for some reason, the hook kind of falls short of sublime. The songwriting smarts have been vacant throughout this second side in my opinion. It's that instinct for impact again: cannily knowing that the last two albums had four or five knockouts each, this time they arranged them all on the first side, presumably to give the initial impression of an embarrassment of riches. Of course that makes the second side almost entirely dispensable. Though I am somewhat troubled by the lurking doubts that maybe the songs are better than I give them credit for being, and I'm just reacting badly to the fact that they've left the wicked rockers like "Watch Out" and "Hey Hey Helen" behind for a smoother synth-pop sound. But I'm going to go ahead and say that this album seems much weaker than the previous two for me.

Arrival - I like this better than the Intermezzo song. Synthesized bagpipes can still bring the drone.

Fernando - Q: How do you get to be my second favourite ABBA song? A: Be featured prominently in the disco episode of That 70s Show. I love this song. Yeah, I know, 'lol piccolos' and everything, but there's something elemental about this song; the arrangement undulates like waves in the sea, and the chorus is as lush and inviting as pop music got in the 70s.. I'm not a superfan of these lyrics but this is some luminous disco music.

Happy Hawaii - This is pretty good. Obviously the contrast between the clean and spacious guitar figure (that goes on to suggest Hawaiian steel later in the song) in the beginning, and the upbeat, slightly bluesy dance-pop in the verses is exactly the kind of depth of texture that ABBA has made their specialty. Hawaii didn't quite need a Brian Wilson to sell the world on the island paradise idyll, but it would still have been great if they had one.

Arrival weaker? Nooooooooo

:)

xpost:

I've always had a fondness for 'Tropical Loveland', it's 'Bang-A-Boomerang' that's my least favourite song on that album! Totally agree with you that 'Hey Hey Helen' and 'Rock Me' are ace, though. 'Tiger' is fucking awesome, too.

And I too think that the self-titled album is superior to Arrival.

Rock Me RULES

Haha, so I'm not the first person to notice that the real hook in this is that little 'Ah-hah!' that comes at the end of the 'knowing me, knowing you' phrase. It's pretty brilliant. a little twist of sexiness in what is essentially a break-up song.

Were I to ever be asked why I like ABBA, I'd point to this moment.

ok, voting is CLOSED! i will try to tabulate results tonight and hopefully roll out the results starting on thursday

Hooray!

Thanks Donna! v excited

Any chance you could confirm receipt of ballots? Silence makes me nervous.

i just sent an e-mail confirmation to everyone who sent in a ballot, let me know if you didn't receive one

(matthewjweiner the e-mail i sent you bounced back but i got a ballot from you)

How many ballots?

(matthewjweiner the e-mail i sent you bounced back but i got a ballot from you)

Sorry, sent it from my Evernote account. Thanks!

all told, 19 ballots (inc. mine)

First one of these I've voted in where I've felt that there were just massive number ones that were not going to make it to number one on my ballot. Three of them.

Really sad that there were only 19 ballots.

more than i was expecting tbh! i feel like there'd have been a lot more if we'd done this in like, 2005

That's okay. It will just be an exclusive party.

Yeah, this being the first time I managed to get a vote in I'm amazed how few there are.

Sorry I didn't get my ballot in -- work has been ba-na-na-na-na-nas and I just didn't have it in me.
Seriously, I should have tried but I didn't. I didn't I didn't I didn't I didn't I didn't.

we still love you, we do we do we do we do

^^^^

i wanted to vote but such a tight deadline, couldn't do it

Ah, I just realized I've got "Chiquitita" too low. :/

Really sad that there were only 19 ballots.

Post your would-be ballots, sd and la lech. That way, when stuff that's on it comes in way too low, we can point our fingers at you. ;)

^^yes!

just tabulated the tracks results, excited to roll these out! (looking more like i'll be starting on friday, i hope - i may do the albums that day and then start rolling the tracks out on mon?)

blargh, in the end i would have voted but this is a really busy time of year for me. This new world of a ballot poll every couple weeks makes it hard to do the groundwork for a ballot I gotta say - - - but then, as always, I can't wait for the results as I suspect they will congeal into a very good Spotify playlist that'll help get me up to speed on this group! Bravo to donna rouge!