I am afflicted agayne this hitherto pleasant Saturday morning shortly after arising at the prompting of a source more respected by me, and more beloved, my daughter. The first video I watched this morning was the single Take a Chance on Me and I was reminded of the grating visuals of white people dancing or something, moving their bodies to the music, which I have never thought was white peoples' oeuvre. I called my daughter immediately after this horror and was remonstrated viz, "I told you to LISTEN, not watch." Thus chastened I have begun listening to "The Greatest Hits" below over the still--unmoving--image one sees below.
I Have a Dream (1979): Spanish guitar instrumentation. The members of the group speak fluent, flawless, unaccented (at least in harmonic song) English. Surely they knew that sixteen years earlier in these colonies "I have a dream" became iconic with far more serious meaning than "I believe in angels, something good in everything I see."
It was my misfortune that the first song was "Dancing Queen", one that my daughter sang and danced to frequently when a child with unfully-developed child-like brain. I hear the strings! I hear the piano! Yes, those are somewhat unusual for a pop group of the the time. However, with the lyrics "dig it" and "Oh yeah-eah!" I revisited the sensation of the hair on the back of my neck standing on end and that queer electrical sensation down my spine that is usually triggered only by someone running her nails on a blackboard. Was "dig it" EVER something a non-fully lobotomized person of even the 1970's said? I was sentient during that decade, one that the late, esteemed art critic Arthur Danto once wrote was the "darkest cultural period since the 10th century", and I do not remember any of my college classmates EVER saying "dig it." But, nose to the grindstone I went on.
Take a Chance on Me: ABBA was influential on other pop music and here, in the way that the lines, We can go dancing, we can go walking, as long as we're together/Listen to some music, maybe just talking, get to know you better/ 'Cause you know I've got/So much that I wanna do, when I dream I'm alone with you/It's magic/You want me to leave it there, afraid of a love affair unmistakably is Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees. So, there's that. And, I'll be damned, here it is again! Oh you can take your time baby, I'm in no hurry, know I'm gonna get you/You don't wanna hurt me, baby don't worry, I ain't gonna let you/Let me tell you now/My love is strong enough to last when things are rough/It's magic/You say that I waste my time but I can't get you off my mind. You can hear the chipmunks singing, clearly. Influential group, ABBA.
Pause: "meticulously crafted" the Times pencil wrote. I actually find that informed by these three songs. Each lasts almost exactly four minutes. They are "tight" compositions. Not like they were high and forgot what they had written and kept repeating "Nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey-hey hey, goo-oo-d bye." Unpause.
Oh! but, Ba ba ba ba baa, ba ba ba ba baa...Ba ba ba ba baa, ba ba ba ba baa
"Meticulously crafted" cotton candy. "Artisinal" cotton candy.
Chiquitita: No! The goddamned track list is wrong, the next song is Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Swine. A very interesting few seconds of instrumentals in the beginning, a contemporary guitar riff and then a string chord extremely similar to that in Layla. More strings. Disco beat with vocal matched perfectly to the beat. I can hear Donna Summers singing Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight. Guitar like Stayin' Alive. The lead female vocalist has great range to her voice and trills bewitchingly.
Money, Money, Money: I work all night, I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay/Ain't it sad?
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me/That's too bad/In my dreams I have a plan/If I got me a wealthy man. The beat here is duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh-duh. And then it changes, I wouldn't have to work at all, I'd fool around... and have a ball-all it slows down! A neat little change of tempo. Reminds me of how Freddy Mercury would modulate and alter tempo to show off his voice. I find this song less tolerable in every sense than any previous.
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me/That's too bad/In my dreams I have a plan/If I got me a wealthy man. The beat here is duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh-duh. And then it changes, I wouldn't have to work at all, I'd fool around... and have a ball-all it slows down! A neat little change of tempo. Reminds me of how Freddy Mercury would modulate and alter tempo to show off his voice. I find this song less tolerable in every sense than any previous.
Dancing Queen (1976). This playlist really sucks. King King is supposed to me the next song. Dancing Queen is repeated. It is the only of ABBA's songs to reach #1 in the U.S. I'm really going to concentrate on Dancing Queen now...The brief instrumental introduction is breathtakingly ethereal and cheerful, perfect for a 17-year old girl's "time of her life." It's sweet. I have had the lyrics for each of these songs open to follow along with the melody, however, after reading the first few lines I closed that window so as not to pollute this lovely melody. On one of the earlier songs the lyrics contained the word "fantasy." That is what Dancing Queen is, a young girl's Cinderella fantasy. Don't we all, 17-year olds or 66-year olds (hmm, maybe not too many of the latter), but especially the young, have fantasies of "one brief shining moment", of one-something that we do that gets us "discovered", recognized and removed, however briefly, from our mediocre lives? Yes, the coach turns back into a pumpkin at midnight, but the few hours before we were having the time of our lives, when "Once we were Queens." It is impossible not to like this song (if you ignore some of the lyrics). This has always been my "favorite" ABBA song and I doubt that anything left on this butchered playlist is going to dislodge it. A few more.
I want to do violence to the compiler of this list. The next song is the familiar Knowing Me, Knowing You (1977), which is not listed at all. I just listened, no lyrics. "Pronounced disco beat--very similar to other disco" I wrote. "Great (three underlines) harmonizing" and that can be said about all of ABBA's songs. Their harmonizing is spectacular, They introduce a little country-rock guitaring about half way through. They influence and they are obviously fine-tuned to pop musical currents elsewhere and are influenced. When did country-rock make the crossover? I'm going to embarrass myself, somebody is going to go nuts on me, but I associate it with Eagles. That's when I first noticed it.
Take a Chance on Me is repeated as the seventh song
I'm going to stop there. There's still 57' to go. Next one up is Mamma Mia (1975). Seven songs (one repeat), 30:32', 4.33 min/song, little longer per than I thought. Through six different songs my take is: Such fun, fun songs, very singable, exquisite harmonizing, thoroughly pleasant, catchy, clearly influential on others and cross-fertilized. Innovative...no, I can't say that. "Meticulously crafted". Oh come. These are not fugues. Don't exaggerate. You can't have everything (unless you're the Beatles) and ABBA gives quite a lot.
