Thank them for the music

First the film, now the tribute show: 25 years after splitting, Scandinavia’s top pop export remains inescapable. Lifelong devotee Peter Myers dives headlong into ABBA’s lyrics and legacy 

Like most music fans from the babyboomer era on, I grew up with ABBA, though I was unfortunately born as the quartet was breaking up. Yes, I occasionally went off them here and there, but I always came back for more. Was it because I thought now-reclusive Agnetha (‘the blonde one’) Fältskog was the most beautiful woman in the world (apart from Debbie Harry)? Was it their buoyant, adrenalin-inducing harmonies? Maybe it was the way Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson’s lyrics spoke to my teenage self…or was it the urgent, striking ‘third voice’ created by Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad’s vocal fusion? 


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It was likely a mishmash of all of the above – prompting a kind of adoration shared by many, many others; the Swedish/Norwegian pop stars have sold more than 370 million records to date, and continue to sell nearly three million albums a year despite not being a band since late 1982. Though often derided as such, ABBA was much more than puerile commercial pop. Puerile commercial pop groups don’t grab the zeitgeist to become a global phenomenon, a stage show or a major motion picture (Mamma Mia!, starring Meryl Streep no less, is due out on 18 September). It’s this fervour the producers of ABBA MANIA will bank on when the tribute show comes to the Esplanade in October with its cache of ‘best-of’ favourites: ‘Mamma Mia’, ‘Voulez- Vous’, ‘Fernando’ and ‘Take a Chance On Me’. But ask any fan: there’s more to ABBA than ‘Dancing Queen’… 

Swede smell of success 
After forming in 1972, ABBA burst onto pop’s radar in 1974 with their joyously infectious Eurovision Song Contest-winning hit ‘Waterloo’. By 1977, they were superstars and had overtaken car manufacturer Volvo as Sweden’s biggest earner of foreign currency. Five short years later, however, the band had unofficially disbanded and ABBA haven’t appeared on stage together since. But they don’t need to: their 1992 compilation ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits has sold more than 26 million copies worldwide and is the fourth biggest-selling album of all time in the UK. On 3 August, prompted by the new film’s release, the album returned to the top of the UK album chart, becoming the oldest album ever to do so. 

Waxing lyrical 
Preview the lovelorn lyrics of late-period ABBA with the 1974 track ‘Dance (While the Music Still Goes On)’, which asks: ‘Why did things turn out so bad?/Was is just a dream, everything we did, everything we had?’ But it wasn’t until 1978, when ABBA modestly thanked us for the music, that the new, thoughtful breed of ministories began to appear. Ulvaeus and Fältskog, married since 1971, divorced a year later, and it is impossible to listen to 1980’s ‘The Winner Takes It All’ now without hearing an eerie prescience in the empathetic words Ulvaeus wrote for his (soon-to-be-ex-)wife to sing: ‘But tell me does she kiss/Like I used to kiss you?/Does it feel the same/When she calls your name?’ 

Dark side of the tune 
There’s also the allure of crazily catchy songs that somehow manage to combine an exhilarating disco track with provocative, even harrowing lyrics. Take the frenziedly feel-good ‘S.O.S’: ‘You made me feel alive, but something died I fear/I really tried to make it out/I wish I understood/What happened to our love, it used to be so good.’ 

ABBA’s final two albums, 1980’s Super Trouper and 1981’s The Visitors, reveal a collection of sombre, haunting tunes that despite sounding like cheery, about-to-go-out-to-a-party music, are as throat-slittingly morose as a Leonard Cohen number when read on the page. The Visitors’ title track is frankly terrifying; the Swedes gaily sing of a woman ‘crackin’ up’ with terror as she prepares to be apprehended by Gestapo-esque authorities for being involved in a plot to overthrow an unnamed totalitarian government. The ability to make political ballads equally as engaging as love songs is the mark of a truly great band. 

Björn to be wild 
As with any of the rock-tribute shows that have made their way to Singapore (remember Queen retrospective We Will Rock You?), expect to get involved at ABBA MANIA. One reviewer of the show’s 2002 London run wrote: ‘Anyone who can sit through this without participating needs an undertaker!’ 

Catch ABBA MANIA at Esplanade Theatre on 4 & 5 Oct.