107. What About Livingstone (Waterloo 1974)

For the longest time (approximately 45 years) I have thought that this song is sung by Agnetha Fältskog. When I listened to this song again now trying to analyse and pick all the finest details of this song I realized that this is actually Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad singing in unison. This revelation overshadowed almost every other aspect I was expecting to hear from this song. 


The vocals of What About Livingstone are one of the purest examples of Lyngstad's and Fältskog's singing voices blending together to create a so called "third voice". You can't really tell one voice from another. To prove this it took me, an avid Abba fan, over 40 years to realize this in this song.

On the other hand this is not a surprise. I liked this song when I bought the Waterloo album sometime in 1980 or 1981, but soon after that it fell to the small pit of Abba songs that I don't particularly enjoy. The tune is catchy, no surprise there, but overly bright and perky tone of this song has made it too saccharine to me. Even now when I listened to the song in peace with no other things occupying my mind I found nothing worthwhile to say about this song. I'm afraid it will, in my next ranking, fall even closer to the bottom of this list.

Pay attention to:

  • How the lead vocals blend with almost autotune-like precision.

 Coming up... So Long

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