ABBA: Classic Or Dud?

As if that 'Can you hear the drums Fernando?' thing and the 'I Have A Dream' thing and the 'I Believe In Angels' dreck were not enough, someone further up the thread has reminded me of 'Thankyou For The Music' - AAAaaaarrrghgh.

I had to hear their drivel all through my teens, and working as a barman in a handbag- dancer nightclub during the last days of disco meant hearing all those 'classic' singles over and over again...
But even if I'd never heard them before in my life, I would find them absolutely bloody dire - it's not just 'connections' stuff.
The songs are just so..... so..... ersatz.
They sound like things written for theatrical musicals about war, or like they've been commissioned for coachloads of pensioners to sing along to. I don't think I've ever heard a single note in any of their melodies that sounded like it couldn't have been statistically predicted. Their production/sound is so chintzy and schmaltzy and faux-classy, it's like being beaten to fucking death with a fool's-gold-plated wedding cake stand.

Kate, you are not alone - it just generally feels like it because they also seem to infect taste like some kind of lowest-common-denominator cultural virus : even Noise/Industrial music fans I know have Abba collections.

And I do think that all that rusty irony shit can't just be discounted either.

Oh, and RF - now that was a seriously enjoyable post...

The melodies - Money Money Money does sound like a show tune (intentionally, I would guess), but I don't see what you mean about the predictability of the melodies. There are some incredible twists and turns - I'd say that as writers and arrangers Benny and Bjorn are up there with the best ever.

Now Alex. What about this : **In my first dancing lesson we danced to Rasputin**

Well you'd have looked a proper charlie dancing to After The Bloody Goldrush, wouldn't you? Or Nick Drake? What's wrong with Boney M - 'Daddy Cool' has a fucking enormous bass-line - great record to dance to. Also Ma Baker. I used to dance to Boney M, Abba, Heatwave, The Supremes, The Specials, The Jam, The Sex Pistols and The Bee Gees within the same hour in 1978. And I still do given half the chance. This is turning into a rant now. I'm angry. Please don't take it personally Alex - I would buy you a dunkelsbier any day and even dance with you - but your musical world is nonsense. Abba are crap because of overexposure! In one or two years ALL MUSIC WAS LIKE IT!! WHAT! Soul music is crap because of falsetto vocals! Oh no!

Roger - you joyless, clueless fuckwit. I bet you're the po-faced, sneering, slightly smelly person in the corner with the Jim Morrison t-shirt. Aren't you?

And as for the Jim Morisson T-shirt, I prefer a Brownshirt with jackboots.

I'm not a musician or musicologist so I can't comment on the predictability of melodies thing - except to say that if that was the case then why haven't there been more groups like ABBA? Predictability implies that making ABBA records must be easy but the list of other bands who've enjoyed anything remotely approaching their level of success with a similar sound is very small. Part of that was the fact that they appeared and flourished at a time when the singles charts were possibly less concerned with 'cool' than any other, so the show-tunes influence (for example) and the Swedishness didn't ring any cultural alarm bells.

I think ABBA's lyrics show flashes of greatness all the way through and from about '77-'78 onward are consistently marvellous.

I'm a bit surprised at myself for how much I love them and how my love for them continues to grow - they still seem to me the most perfect group, despite inconsistencies of output.

I mean I say this as someone who likes a silly dance song or ten but, I don't know I'll never like Abba. Also I probably have subconscious prejudices about the 12 cd people who like them being fantastically happy and going to see Bjorn Again 3 times a year and living wonderful lives.

Great stuff while the initial buzz was still there but occasional radio/disco listening is as much ABBA as I need. So not quite classic because like the bunny in the Duracell ad they've run out of power while the best of Chic, EWF, Motown etc still motors on.

Yay! You know you've finally arrived on ILM when someone says you're talking bullshit!
What's that 'for the most part' mean, though, eh Dr C ?
And the answer to your question is 'No' - because:
(1) Indie feedback scenarios do nothing for me.
(2) Don't worry, I too lost such childish 'rockist' (tm ILM) notions as 'more real' >20 years ago - it's just that I've never felt convinced that it was for the better. I acknowledge it's a lot more complicated than 'real' vs. 'fake', but you have to decide whether you're willing to lose the dimensions of dialogue that the belittling of such ideas, however crassly expressed, leads to. Aren't there areas of aesthetics which allow for the validity of these criteria? Or do you think that pop music should by definition be exempt?
(3) I wasn't referring to the idea of Abba as 'fake' vs. Some Indie Noise as 'real' - I was trying to get across (perhaps badly) that they and their sound and their songs have to me a kind of representational efficiency <=> ideas/emotions/themes which is the audio equivalent of a fake tan. I'm not saying that I think all music 'should' have these affective/cognitive functions either, nor even that music which is popular and melodic and shiny necessarily has only 'ersatz' qualities (I find the Pet Shop Boys 'Rent' for example, to be quite a lucid musical/lyrical encapsulation of a complex set of feelings as well as a lovely wee tune with a sophisticated depth of production) - but I am saying that the idea of finding 'emotion' in Abba's songs (by which we don't usually just mean -'hey, this sounds like fun!') makes me think 'WTF?', in much the same way as imagining those for whom 'Lady In Red' is a rilly good love song...

As for 'laughable' - yes such an attitude may well be so by our sophisticated standards. Or maybe it wouldn't be so much a laugh, as a snigger.

I used to dance to Boney M, Abba, Heatwave, The Supremes, The Specials, The Jam, The Sex Pistols and The Bee Gees within the same hour in 1978. And I still do given half the chance

Bet you get a bit more out of breath now though haha
And just where the hell were you going in 1978 that played all this? I was stuck with either Saturday Night CattleMarket 'Discos', or Saturday Night Fuckwit 'Punk/New Wave Discos'..... but then I didn't want to dance to either...

As for your final point, I would refer you to the post by Andrew L:
I do hate the assumption that if you don't like ABBA (or their cohorts in evil, the Beatles) you're somehow anti-pop, anti-dance, anti-fun, whatever. You really don't have to be a musical elitist/purist to find ABBA cloying and annoying.

(Office Card: No - but it HELPS!! hahaha)

Tom - I can't back that melody thing up with any musicological analysis myself, cos I don't speak tadpole. It's just that I've never heard any sequence by them which sounded 'unexpected', there's never any sense of suspension/resolution in them - its just like one damn note after another...
I think you have a good point about 'why not more Abba's if they were that predictable', I need to think about that a bit more, but maybe:
Well maybe there have been lots more 'Abbas' - ref. Kate earlier.
Time and place, like you said.
The issue of being 'the original' group of that type.
The stuff mentioned by dleone in his post.

I think this thread is great - the degree of polarisation it produced dug out all the criteria which people use to evaluate music, many of which are themselves the subject of dispute as to applicability - eg craft & skill, art vs. industry, functionalism, personal/social context, who else likes it, etc.
I think that all kinds of things are relevant because they are made so by the surrounding culture - awkward, but everything counts. That's why its all so fucking personal and emotive and difficult and interesting.

To discos, nightclubs and people's houses.

**I think this thread is great - the degree of polarisation it produced dug out all the criteria which people use to evaluate music**

**eg craft & skill, art vs. industry, functionalism, personal/social context, who else likes it, etc**

Do you know what? I don't know why I love Abba. I don't know why I love ABC, The Human League, Joy Division, The Kinks, Chic....

I know *what it is that they do* that I like, but I don't know why I like what they do, at least in a way that I can sensibly analyse and articulate.

The polarisation around ABBA IS astounding, though. Ronan thinks it's too bubblegum, I think they're rather bleak. At least the later stuff is.

Alex - you didn't make me angry. Sorry if you thought that.

Bleak Bubblegum -- chew it and feel your spirit wither. (A cousin to Chunks of Sadness, Robert Smith's favorite chocky.)

There's a definite bit of nostalgia for loving Abba on my part in that, born in '71 and all, theirs was some of the first pop music I heard and recognized as such on the radio. "Dancing Queen" and "Voulez-Vouz" and all give me a basic rush and a fix, much like snoozerific hash such as "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" also does -- but the latter just sounds like snoozerific hash, but ABBA still sounds perfectly sparkling and wonderful.

I think it's odd ABBA haven't got a younger audience among people who are into music, but on the other hand I think the number of those people who go back and investigate older pop music is generally quite low (the people talking on the Four Tops threads have been older than the ILM average I'd guess).

Also, bump.

The delights of ABBA are many..... from the perfect pop of hits like 'S.O.S', 'Knowing me Knowing You' and 'Take a chance on me' to the beautifully written, darker moments like 'The day before you came' (one of the greatest songs ever written), 'The Winner takes it all' (ditto) and 'The Visitors'.

It's a shame they're remembered more for their appalling campy dress sense than their incredible music talents - Andersson/Ulvaeus are easily up there with Lennon and McCartney for their staggering songwriting talents - moreso, in fact, in my humble opinion.

To even question Classic/Dud with ABBA is terrible. ABBA changed the face of music, and their legacy lives on.

Absolutely classic.

(They were always princesses to me)

Just bought The Visitors for $5, absent the bonus tracks sadly, but remastered. Investigating their album tracks might be worthy of an ILM thread, actually...

Anyway!!!! I used to be like that, especially in the late 70s/early 80s when you couldn't switch on a radio or TV without hearing their latest number 1!!!! But even then, I liked the odd tune like "Knowing Me, Knowing You", "Name of the Game", "Eagle", "Voulez Vous", "Gimme Gimme Gimme" etc... And then some time in the late 80s Channel 4 showed "Abba- The Movie" in some graveyard slot, and I thought "Well, they did one or two good tunes, so I might as well give it a watch!!!!"... And I thorougly enjoyed myself!!!!! A much better concert movie than that pisspoor Led Zep "Song Remains the Same" thingie!!!! Bit ironic considering tha Zep at the time were the rock equivalent of Abba in terms of massive popularity and massive critical derision!!!!

Continuing the Zep connection, Abba even have an equivalent of "Hammer of the Gods" in the ace "Name of the Game", which is still one of my fave pop books!!!! (And it's co-written by Andrew Loog Oldham, for Cliff's sake!!!!!)

great column today, Tom

Yes, great article.

hmmm i'm going to suggest classic, because the girls could sing and when i feel in a certain frame of mind i'll put on the records and enjoy them.

faves: knowing me knowing you, gimme gimme gimme, fernando

"The Day Before You Came" was one of their last flops, not one of their first ones; between "Waterloo" and "S.O.S." none of their singles hit big in Britain at all.

Good point Marcello.

Thanks Dominique and Baaderonix!

'Dancing Queen' always struck me as one of the saddest hit singles ever. Partly because, yes, the "time of her life" is now, is gone. But also the knowledge that 30 years later, dancing queen is working at the post office in some provincial town listening nostalgically to 'Dancing Queen'.

As far as the lover/murderer equation goes in "TDFYC," the line "I never even noticed I was blue" probably tilts it in the "lover" direction, but of course lover and murderer could be the same person and the murder not necessarily physical - i.e. he came but now he's gone.

These are gold. ABBA gold

(xp) Didn't Argento film that one?

“Elaine” is another great example

Someone needs to isolate the vocals on those tracks, slow them down and douse them with a ton of reverb so we can hear what the trailer will sound like.