ABBA: Classic Or Dud?

Always gave off a "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" vibe to me.

Originally they had a crack at writing a national anthem type thing, which ultimately ended up in Chess. It was called Nationalsang at one point, then Anthem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEUi1Pptb5c

Does "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" come from schlager stylistically?

I'd put it in with their rock'n'roll pastiches.

I was wondering if that was it, too, with the swing rhythm. It's always sounded European and old fashioned to me, though! Like, really old fashioned.

Why Did It Have To Be Me is pretty similar but maybe more schlager because of the male-female back and forth.

It's hard to say exactly what is and isn't schlager. One level is that it's just pop music and if it works it's broadly popular and that kinda makes it schlager.

The big Abba-as-schlager record is the original Greatest Hits, with He Is Your Brother, Hasta Manyana, Another Town Another Train, Fernando, Dance While the Music Still Goes On...

oh look it's a list of all the ABBA songs I can't stand

(the fact that the same band is responsible for "The Visitors" and "Nina, Pretty Ballerina" astounds me)

There's a good Chuck Eddy quote in Accidental Evolution about ABBA's stylistically underpinnings. I'll try to find it.

this song is fucking incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhr6tUE32YA

Also electric sitar? Where? You mean the mandolins? (I think there are mandolins on it anyway).

Eagle tho'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDI7x1nwTUw

omg what a freeze frame

Did they do anything quite as Floydian as Eagle?

They could have made a really cool, peripherally prog sounding record.

They have quite a few progge moments.

Intermezzo No. 1!

'Intermezzo No. 1' fucking rules.

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

That bassline...

Should I watch ABBA - the Movie?

Yes. The plot about the journalist is a drag but some of the concert footage is thrilling as it gets.

They should do a new cut which totally omits the journalist and includes more ABBA.

Oooh sounds like I neeeeeed to watch this. I love the documentary filmmaker 'plot' in Spice World (using plot very loosely here) so I'm intrigued how the Abba one plays out.

Spice World is in fact the film that the ABBA film resembles most. But it was the latter that ignited a discourse about Agnetha’s derrière, so why not watch and judge for yourself

This framing story is reminding of Velvet Goldmine for some reason.

Looking at the Spotify "Popular" list, surprised to see "Angeleyes" making a surge. I've always loved it but felt like it was underappreciated, not part of the top canon etc. It's #3 on their popular list right now, is it on a soundtrack or something?

bc of its great sequence in mamma mia! here we go again

j/k i don't actually know

For me, this is the prototypical example of a band I despised back in the day but now find thoroughly enjoyable.

gonna blast "I Am the City" now.

For me, this is the prototypical example of a band I despised back in the day but now find thoroughly enjoyable.

Looking at the Spotify "Popular" list, surprised to see "Angeleyes" making a surge. I've always loved it but felt like it was underappreciated, not part of the top canon etc. It's #3 on their popular list right now, is it on a soundtrack or something?

lol mystery solved

For me, this is the prototypical example of a band I despised back in the day but now find thoroughly enjoyable.

my 9th birthday party involved all my friends going to see Abba The Movie. We universally loved them. Then from the age of around 12, ABBA seemed to be thee band to despise. They were for some reasion 'the enemy'. This went on for a long time. Now I have regressed back to my 9 year old self and find them thoroughly enjoyable again (though there are a good few ABBA songs I would be very happy to never hear again).

Frida is the Dowager Countess of Plauen. Take that, Sir Elton.

They should definitely do a new cut without the journo; he's doing a nine year stretch for something incredibly unsavoury.

Chris Carter was right after all.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZKk0vXesqmA/X9zspXItOZI/AAAAAAAAKCU/j_lEhCqq2RAjhwNF12352KGx2mLFH6WZACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/abbachris.jpg

100%. I was thinking exactly the same when I posted.

Is there any clamour for a spoiler-filled writeup of what ABBA Voyage actually is and whether it's any good? Because I certainly have opinions.

Yes please!

Is it generally good or bad? I’m still humming and ha-ing about going even though the few people I know who’ve been have all loved it.

Ok so I was firmly in the sceptic camp, my son had been and loved it but I often think he's a bit uncritical of music and events and we have divergent tastes and (like my daughter) I had concerns about the direction it took live music in.

So I resolved myself I wasn't in love enough with the idea to go to London for it but when we ended up there for something at the BFI then it felt like something worth doing.

I wasn't sure I done the right thing, as the next door popup bar was wall-to-wall beveragino/live laugh love and an expensive prosecco bar being the centre of the inside concourse surrounded by people in generic '1970s' fancy dress (although the ticket was explicit about which elements of that were offensive and not tolerated) made it clear what the target audience was.

The concourse is wood panelled and looks vaguely like a stereotype version of a sauna but works quite well in making it feel less like a generic stadium and more like an intimate show. For floor standing (the "dancing zone") there's a tunnel with a handily placed bar in it then through to the hall. Which is much, much smaller than expected. Looking round it actually feels... intimate? There's an animation of some woods on a big screen and occasionally you can spot someone or something running about which seems more frequent as the house lights go down.

Spoiler tags for the show content as anyone who is curious and/or able to go - and I don't know whether there's a plan to move it anywhere - might want to stay unspoiled.

Starting with The Visitors is a bold move that throws the audience, many of whom seem not to know the song at all. The Abbatars rise from through the floor in silhouette during the autotune/quartertone intro section but with "now I hear them moving" the stage lights come on and we're away. I'm a child again and I'm watching Abba on stage and my emotions get the better of me and I'm a blubbering mess.

Hole In Your Soul is an unexpected blast, with SOS finally bringing the crowd into familiar territory and properly engaging them.

KMKY follows and is the first song not performed by the Abbatars. Superficially this seems to be so the film can replicate parts of the video but the reason is far more prosaic - the longer they are on stage the less convincing they are, or rather you begin to see them as flat from time to time, and your eyes clearly need a break. But in this case it's well worth doing as there's one scene where Benny and Frida are so in love (more than they ever managed in the video at the time) which makes their breakup a few seconds later utterly heartbreaking and prompts emotions #2 from me.

Then, I'm afraid, the bar called. Chiquitita and Fernando are songs I've never liked (even if the crashing sun behind the latter improves things when I pretend it's Lars Von Trier's Melancholia) but I'm clearly an outlier because these are the best received songs of the whole night, which does make me wonder if I've accidentally booked the Brotherhood of Man fanclub night by mistake. Mama Mia rescues things somewhat though it's preceded by the first part of clunky audience interaction as Frida introduces it. These feel a bit staged - they get one each - but actually if there's one thing BBC4 has shown is that they always did uncomfortable intros on 70s TV shows so it's probably very authentic.

Three songs, quite flash so time again to lose the Abbatars. Bjorn comes on and introduces the band (who are utterly anonymous and not lit or even on stage for the rest of the show, raising questions about whether all the rest of the show is on tape) and does the verse of Does Your Mother Know before leaving the rest of the song to actual living people. Sorry, but if I wanted to see three women belt out an Abba cover in front of a competent but unspectacular band then I'd go down the Legion on a Friday night and it wouldn't cost me all this money.

Eagle up next, and backed by the first of two animated sequences that tell of a young child's quest for some kind of hidden temple which culminates in the band being revealed as giant Zardoz heads in the second part backing Voulez-Vous at the next gap. The former perhaps isn't a surprising choice for this treatment when we think back to Abba The Movie and the role it plays there, but the latter is a real surprise for me as I would have thought it was one of the big hits.

Lay All Your Love On Me starts the next part of the set with giant Frida and Agnetha stalking hanging video screens and concludes with genuinely the most astonishing thing I've ever seen on a stage. I'm struggling to describe it but the screens show the band top down which pulls away as the song ends then as Summer Night City starts it changes to Abbatars in an instant and it's like you've been thrown 90 degrees onto your back. Gimme Gimme Gimme brings down glitter balls and brings the party bangers section to a close.

After Voulez-Vous it gets a bit odd. When All Is Said And Done is an introspective choice which, on the face of it, feels like it's just to show off the effects (and to be fair the way they step forward and back, in and out of the shadows being just visible in the dark is brilliantly done) but to follow them up with Don't Shut Me Down/I Still Have Faith In You smacks of reminding the audience there was a new album came out this year that they didn't even listen to and they should now buy.

Waterloo is handled very, very weirdly. You'd have thought it would have been an obvious candidate for Abbatars in Eurovision gear but instead we get a supercut of British TV performances of the song, none of which are things you haven't seen multiple times already.

The Abbatars come back for the umpty-tum of Thank You For The Music before a storming version of Dancing Queen closes the show.

An encore of The Winner Takes It All is a triumph, and "and tell me does she kiss, like I used to kiss you" absolutely finishes me and I'm in floods of tears again.

All that's left is for the 'today' aged Abbatars to come on and thank people for turning up and sharing their vision. As they walk out across the wings it doesn't look so good but in centre stage I'd bet cold hard cash those were real people.

So it's not a perfect show but I'm absolutely delighted with my decision to go and if you have any desire to see it then you definitely should. Some practicalities:

• The resale option on the Ticketmaster site itself means you can definitely get tickets for the show you want to see so make your other plans first
• I didn't track the costs but the resale pricing does vary so it may be worth putting in some legwork to see when the optimum time is to buy
• The matinee show is much cheaper and so definitely a cost effective way of seeing it
• The evening show is still very early, you'll be done by 9
• There's basically nothing there except the arena so don't expect to make a night of it
• ]-* There may well be a set change at some point as they sell Take A Chance On Me t-shirts but it doesn't get played. So I might end up going again if it does. [/h]
• Make no mistake, the technology is amazing. But you have to keep your eyes on the Abbatars, if you look at the screens to the side it looks like a video game and takes you out of the moment.
• They're all good but Benny's is far and away the most convincing Abbatar. Bjorn probably the worst.

What does the technology mean for live music? Well for all my worries beforehand I think surprisingly little. This is clearly a very expensive endeavour which needs a lengthy residency to pay for it so only open to enormodome or heritage acts. My first thought of a candidate band is Fleetwood Mac, spending some of that sweet Yacht Rock Boom cash on having the diaphanous Stevie Nicks from the Rhiannon video on stage. Don't stop thinking about tomorrow indeed.

It does feel at times like you're trapped on the set of the ill-advised Suggs karaoke show Night Fever and I'm not actually sure who the target audience is apart from "people with money" but I am a person and I have money so I guess I fall into that demographic.

tl;dr - I had great fun and so will you.

Argh, hidden tags broken

what elements of 1970s fancy dress would be considered offensive?

"so-called afro wigs"

American Indian costumes?

I don't think people in the UK are all that aware of the offence that might cause.

I was imagining see-through blouses or giant coke spoon necklaces.

is there a good book on Abba? seems the autoritative text is the 600p mammoth by Carl Magnus Palm but tbh it looks really boring

I read it at the time, and ‘boring’ is indeed my lasting memory of it

CMP sort of redeeming himself here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CcnrL02FG8t/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

I drunkenly theorised at the weekend that every ABBA song is secretly a short psychological horror story and I'd like to test it out with you all. Suggestions and examples welcome