ABBA are reuniting

I’ve been playing it over and over again today. It’s such a strange record, and like a lot of ABBA, a lot of it sounds off-kilter and naff, but that’s something to push through. “Little Things” in particular is… challenging… but then it segues straight into “Don’t Shut Me Down”, which immediately reframes the idyll. And then there are the subsequent songs about marital/post-marital strife, which sit all the better in its wake. B&B’s ventriloquising is unsettling in much the same way as “The Winner Takes It All” was us telling - all that self-denigration - but A&F interpret the sentiments beautifully, and in a way that suggests that they’re fully on board.

(“us settling” = “unsettling”… I may have had a drink or two)

Don’t get the hate for Little Things. Fits in the long tradition of sickly twee Abba songs haunted by a sense of loss.

Yeah, that one works for me. The two I’m still a bit cool on are Bumblebee and Ode To Freedom.

I'm having a lot of fun writing about Voyage, and the reaction to it, for a glossy gay lifestyle magazine. It does help enormously when you're not welded to the hot take.

:)