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Abba

7

 Abba

ABBA                  
                             
Has there ever been a band so singular? So significant? So… Swedish!? Not a lot of bands can say they have been offered one billion dollars to reunite and tour, on top of that, not a lot of bands can say they TURNED DOWN a billion dollars to reunite and tour, but then again not a lot of bands are like Abba. Did you know that the CD of choice on Nirvana’s tour bus was Abba’s Gold? I mean, shit, there is an entire book written about that greatest-hits-compilation. The group’s debut album, 1973’s Ring Ring, would start the band’s streak of eight amazing albums. They really found their first taste of fame by entering in 1974’s Eurovision Song Contest [a sorta-proto-American Idol show] with their song “Waterloo”, which thanks to YouTube, you can watch in all of its 70’s glory here. This would also be the lead-off track & title track to their second album, 1974’s Waterloo. It should be noted that ABBA is actually an acronym [A.B.B.A.] for the band members: Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. This was a band that needed each other.  The men needed the women & the women needed the men, in more ways than one. Abba’s music (or Björn  and Benny’s melodies) would be nothing without its two female-stars and vocalists: Agnetha and Anni-Frid. This was a band that was composed of two married couples: Fältskog and Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad and Andersson. With the increase of their popularity, their personal lives suffered which eventually resulted in the collapse of both marriages. Abba would see a lot of their success come from outside their studio albums. For instance, their 1975 Greatest Hits album would see them have their first UK number one album and see them crack the Billboard top 50 here in the States, not to mention the aforementioned Gold album, released in 1992, the perfect greatest hits album the CD era ever gave us. It sold so well and sounded so good they had to release More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits, and just five years ago, to celebrate the band's 40th anniversary since their Eurovision song contest breakthrough, they bundled Gold and More Gold with a third disc: Golden B-Sides. Now that’s a lot of gold! But with a band this great you can’t really blame them. The band would release five more albums (1975's ABBA, '77's Arrival (which contained the band's most recognizable song “Dancing Queen” [certain songs hit the globe: The Macarena, Outkast's "Hey Ya!", Pharell's "Happy", Psy's "Gangnam Style"... "Dancing Queen" is up there as a song that everyone from around the world can recongize and get down with...]) 1978's ABBA The Album, '79's Voulez-Vous, 1980's Super Trouper) before ending their amazing reign in pop-music with 1981's The Visitors. This is the Abbey Road of disco albums. They truly left us with their swan song. You can tell a band truly kicks-ass when even their lesser known album-tracks are gems. Gems that could knock out any of today’s robotic & repetitive bland pop. How does a band from Sweden go on to become one of the world’s most commercially successful bands? Well, I’ll let Benny explain it himself from an excerpt from his acceptance speech given at 2010’s Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame's induction ceremony: “So, there was no radio, but there were record shops. I bought my first record in 1957 —Jailhouse Rock with Elvis Presley, with a great B-side: Treat Me Nice. From there on I didn't really turn back because if it wasn't for those songs by Leiber/Stoller, Goffin/King, The Beach Boys records, Lennon/McCartney, Ray Davis, the Motown catalog, Joni Mitchell, Chuck Berry and all those others, we would not be here tonight. I think Abba is a mix of all this European stuff we had as young kids and of what came after that...” This is music that will live on forever. So let’s re-cap: eight amazing studio albums, four consistent band-members, 385 million albums sold, one Broadway-stage-musical incorporating their music, two movie adaptations of said musical, one Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction… I’d say this band gets the credit and recognition they deserve. Also, on a side note, you haven’t really lived until you’ve run the entirety of a soccer-field with “The Winner Takes All” blasting through your headphones during that weird time where the whole world seems asleep, that time after midnight but before the birds have woken up and started chirping. That is experiencing life. I’d like to point out this band only lasted from 1972-1982. For a band to be as relevant today, almost forty years after their last recorded music together says a lot more than any of the other achievements listed above can. There is something magical about Abba. You can hear it in their music. Thank you for the music. It is timeless. It will outlast all of us. I would like to end this with a bit of good news. Although they turned down that billion dollar offer in 2000 to tour, a reunion, of sorts, would happen  nearly two decades later; On April 27, 2019, the band members announced they had recorded two new songs, and as of September of this year, Ulvaeus has said that there were five new ABBA songs recorded set to be released in 2020. There may even be a tour with the band’s life-like avatars (or “abba-tars” as they are referred to as) based on their late 1970’s hay-day personas. Not a bad time to be alive. Not a bad time to be…
ABBA
Favorite Abba Song: "Tiger" 

 Further Reading:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/689pmp/the-noisey-guide-to-abba
https://parade.com/276999/viannguyen/thank-you-for-the-music-10-crazy-facts-about-abba-for-their-40th-anniversary/



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