Intelligent Life On Planet Rock
Pure Pop for Then People
Posted by Archie Valparaiso on 26 May 2009 - 5:58pm.
One can only assume that Benny and Bjorn, as they were counting the NASA-hangarfuls of beans they'd earned from the Mamma Mia! franchise, must have looked at each other, shrugged, and said, "Well, if that's what they want, let's give them some more."
The really impressive thing about this - even if your aversion to ABBA is highly developed (hi, Twango!) - is that they have had the nouse and the musical skill to pick up not where they left off but about four or five years earlier: smack bang in the middle of the period when they were having a hit a month.
I bet even Macca wishes he could do the same.
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I'm not impressed...
and I like Abba. The melody isn't particularly memorable, the vocal lacks personality and the instrumentation is just hideous... as if Jennifer Rush was jammin' with Def Leppard and Mister Mister in an eighties rock nightmare. Maybe it will grow on me...
Trust me
It will grow on you. The chorus is irrelevant, just the oyster around the pearl. The hook of the chorus is the thing. I heard a snippet of it a few days ago and thought "Meh" - then I spent all weekend humming the fucker.
I'm not sure about this one
It's a bit of a plodder, isn't it? It does sound like Heart mind. So they're spot on there.
Horrible
But you would expect me to say that wouldn't you!
:-)
Not even if I were drunk, Sir!
and I am.
Needs more
Cowbell.
According to Google translate...
cowbell is 'KOSKÄLLA' in Swedish.
Can't be
That's the name of my kitchen table.
You know what they wanna do with that...
they wanna put a banging great donk on that.
I gave it a second listen
Oh dear. There are some truly horrible synth sounds on there.
They were truly horrible first time around in 1978
Even the dreaded Pan Pipes of Andean Doom get a look in early on, and they're even more horrible.
That didn't stop millions of people from lapping them up at the time, though, and I don't think it will now.
pint
Arch?
mine's a Litre
The keyboard glissando on SOS ...
... in the build up to the chorus is one of the finest moments in pop.
The keyboard glissando on SOS ...
... in the build up to cheese, is one of the finest moments in pap.
fixed
I can remember it
After one play. You can't say that about the Manics' new single. Hit!
So we're agreed then
Now, as then, they are making dross as consistently as they always did. Give it 15 years and people will be ironically squeaking that they like this too. Whilst never actually listening to it. Sorry Arch.
No irony
I like it. It features all the best Abba quirks: the strangely melancholic verses, the changes in key and tempo, the stirring chorus. I've listened to it about a dozen times, and while it's almost certainly Abba by numbers, it's all the better for it.
Although it could do with less synthetic pan pipe. And more cowbell.
Now this is bad Abba.
My point exactly
ABBA by numbers is what people want. (The "Chiquitita" pan pipes are indeed ghastly, but they were ghastly on "Chiquitita" - a number-one record in ten countries.)
Purely on the level of a calculated marketing plan, this is quite brilliant. Phase one: sell the original-cast soundtrack albums in all countries where Mamma Mia! has been put on. Phase two: make the movie and sell that soundtrack album. Phase three: the Christmas DVD. Phase four: the following summer, release a brand-new song now that people - having taken in their stride that even a bronchitic dog (hi, Pierce!) can sing these songs - have been primed to accept that it's no longer Agnetha and Ana-Frida.
Move on everyone. Get back to your new Bob Dylan album!
I like it, even though, at best, it could be described as ABBA light (should that be 'lite'). Anything that BB write is never going to be the same without AA, but it's not bad. I much prefer the song they recently wrote to promote Benny's Stockholm hotel. It definitely sounds like an Abba song.
Not long before motion sickness sets in
Abba are good in the same way that Saab are good. They are well produced, nicely engineered and ever so slightly quirky. It makes people feel they have done something a little different - when essentially all they have done is bought a more expensive Vauxhall.
The fact is that other similar cars are better made - just better cars ultimately. The Hot Chocolate 16V 2.0TDi for example or The Bee Gee SUV and MPV models.
I look back at the cars my parents drove in the 70s and early 80s with fondness - not because they were good cars but because they evoke a time and place. Often broken down at Membury Services.
So I have a related fondness for the Abba, ELO and Supertramp of my yesterdays - but if I ever do whip one of these old jalopies out for a spin - it's not long before motion sickness sets in
Must be the fumes from the nostalgia tank