Kinda weird that we don't already have a thread on ABBA...
I've found myself listening to a whole load of ABBA again - probably because my Xoc's sister and young neices were in London a couple of weeks ago, and we took them to see the excellent Mamma Mia!. We'd seen it before, but were happy to go back and do it all again, and the experience reminded me how much I used to love all my parents' ABBA albums.
Aaand... HMV had a '4 for £20' offer, allowing me to grab all the original albums on CD. Which was nice.
Listening to it all again, I'm finding that a lot of their early-to-mid-career stuff has become almost too familiar to me, doubtless by dint of appearing on every 'Gold' collection ever. It's the slightly less well-known material toward the end of their career that's grabbed me; having a nice wide streak of dramaturgist in my musical soul, I really like the bleaker, chillier songs they recorded after both couples split up, then divorced. Super Trouper and The Visitors are on heavy rotation right now...
... and the weird thing is, some of these songs have a similar vibe to the latter part of the Scissor Sisters album (my reasonably-current obsession). Not musically, of course - and, sexually, ABBA are about as straight as a very straight thing - but there's a comparable feeling of regret for what was, and what could've been - and, as with Better Luck, a sense of the singer trying to salvage a workable, companionable friendship from the wreckage of a relationship.
My absolute guaranteed-wobbly-lip tracks are the bittersweet Our Last Summer, the regretful One Of Us, the numb The Day Before You Came and the sad, end-of-the-line When All Is Said And Done. Wintry ABBA.
What's your favourite season of ABBA? |
