Revisiting Abba

  In some way,  Santa Rosa should not be in my Abba ranking. In 1972 the group (that would not be given its name until 1973) was a side project of two solo artists and two songwriters and record producers. Santa Rosa was a song Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus wrote and recorded for the Japanese market as a follow-up to their song She's My Kind Of Girl that had become a surprise hit in Japan earlier the same year. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad did not appear on this recording, but because it was released on the B-side of the second single of the group, it is included in my ranking and therefore in this blog.  I heard this song for the first time as late as 1994, when it was included on the rarities disc on Thank You For the Music four-CD compilation. It was exciting to hear a "new Abba track" that I didn't know even existed and I've been fond of it ever since in spite of the female half of the group not appearing on the song and the male half not...

  I Have a Dream is another single release from the  Voulez-Vous album that is ranked low in my list. It was a major hit for Abba when it was released, but currently it is more frowned upon by fans. Partly because it does not sit well on the album among up-tempo and high-energy dance tracks and partly because of the infamous use of children's choir in the latter part of the song. I've always been quite indifferent towards I Have a Dream. I don't hate it but I don't recall ever liking it terribly much either. Let's listen to it and find out what I think about it now. I Have a Dream is a totally inoffensive track, that stands out awkwardly on the a-side of Voulez-Vous between the title track and Angeleyes . The lyrics about "believing in angels" and the "final destination" sound strange coming from the lyricist Björn Ulvaeus , who has during the last decades been an outspoken atheist. The melody is simple and not too challenging. So on the surfac...

  Voulez-Vous is a difficult Abba album for me. It was a huge success, of course, and five songs from it were released as equally successful singles. However, to me, the five songs that were not released as singles are all better than the five songs that were. In general the songs selected to promote the album don't make anything move inside me. They are professionally crafted, arguably catchy and radio-friendly songs, but the others were more interesting and appealing.  Angeleyes is the weakest of the bunch. It reached number 3 in the UK charts, so at least the British record-buying public disagreed with me. I haven't listened to this song a lot so it is interesting to see if a new listen with an open mind will change my mind. The song starts promisingly. The layered "a-ha-ha" vocals and the intricate instrumentation behind it create an interesting wall of sound that is characteristic to Abba recordings of that era. However, the promise turns into confusion when th...

  After the release of The Visitors  album nothing was the same in the Abba family. The group consisted of two divorced couples, the female members of which were poised to pursue their solo careers and the male members looking forward to their collaboration with Tim Rice to create a musical. In the spring of 1982 they met in the studio to start work on their ninth album, but soon found out that the fun and passion needed was not there. After recording three tracks they put the album plans on hold for good. Only one of these three tracks was deemed worth releasing.  It was almost a year later that You Owe Me One  was released on the b-side Under Attack , their last single for 39 years. At first I loved it, as I loved any unheard Abba track for a while. However you could hear the disintegration of the band in this song. The highly processed vocals of Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad failed to disguise the lack of enthusiasm for the song and the sparse arrangemen...

  I actually have a quite good memory of hearing  I'm a Marionette for the first time. When I became an Abba fan in the late 1970s I had Arrival and The Album recorded on a 60 min cassette with both albums missing their final songs (as they were both a little over 30 minutes long). So it wasn't until I found I'm a Marionette in a jukebox at some gas station on the b-side of Take a Chance On Me single that I heard that missing track for the first time and it took quite a while (maybe a year or two) until I finally bought The Album and could listen to I'm a Marionette like the rest of the tracks.  This rare occasion of hearing this song for the first time and then not being able to hear it again for a while grew an air of mystery around it. And as the song was uncharacteristically dark (drawn from the Girl With the Golden Hair mini-musical Abba played during their tour) it felt very strangely intriguing to me. When I finally bought The Album, and spun it on my turntab...

  This song is a special case in the Abba catalogue in many ways. First and foremost, it is the only track Abba recorded and released that was not written by the group members themselves. Secondly it was recorded not for their own use but as a service to their German record company Polydor for use in a charity album Stars im Zeichen eines guten Sterns in 1975. Abba donated their effort and to keep the other costs to a minimum they recorded a medley of three American folk songs. The distribution of this album was limited so the song didn't have much impact and most Abba fans didn't even know it existed until it was released on a b-side of their 1978 single Summer Night City . Though I had been a die-hard Abba fan since the late 1970's even I didn't know of this song until the summer of 1986, when I found the single at a Brighton flea market among three other single b-side tracks that were still missing from my collection. I played this song a lot that summer, but soon ...