From Led Zeppelin to ABBA and why not.
It is all good. Right from their beginning when ABBA won the Eurovision Song
Contest in 1974 with Waterloo, they have been criticized for being too commercial,
manufactured pop - but there is a genius in being able to compose a 3-minute
pop song with a great bridge and a chorus that is as catchy as a virus. Is
there anyone who doesn't want to sing the chorus to You are a Dancing Queen.
If you didn't know - and I didn't - their name comes from their members -
Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid. They are from Sweden, also famous
for Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman and not much else. But their songs are
in English. Two men and two women. In love. Very sweet and it is quite sad
when the marriage between Agnetha (the blonde) and Bjorn falls apart.
The two men wrote the songs and the women
sang them. After the Eurovision contest they were not at all popular in Sweden.
People would hide their albums when guests came over. The Swedes are way
too serious. They sing joyful music. That upset the Swedes. The world sucks.
Your music should reflect that. They sold over 300 million albums which is
not something to sneeze at. A lot of people who just want pop that they can
sing to. They had retired in 1981 but reunited and released an album in 2021
which actually got good reviews and won a bunch of awards. I actually only
know a handful of their songs, but I like them all. Peter Townsend
called their song SOS the best pop song ever written. One's liking of this
documentary probably depends on your liking of ABBA - it is fine but it never
gets too deep.
