ABBA
Do you remember the wistful trill of pipe music
and a soft, haunting voice asking "Can you hear the drums, Fernando?"
- If you were tuned into the radio in the seventies you'd have to say
I do (I do, I do, I do, I do).
The Swedish foursome ABBA beguiled the world pop
scene and everyone was taken with the lycra-loving couples from the
moment that their silver platform boots, crushed satin jumpsuits and a
cheesy pop number entitled Waterloo had thrust them into the
limelight at the Eurovision Song Contest in April 1974.
All four members of ABBA had been individually
successful in Sweden before Ulvaeus' marriage to Faltskog and the
long-term romance between Andersson and Lyngstad led to their teaming
up as ABBA in 1972.
Waterloo coasted to the top of the UK
chart and even managed to sneak into the American Top 10. (This was to
be the start of a difficult relationship with US record buyers;
although they never really cracked the market, they did manage ten Top
20 hits, including a Number 1 with Dancing Queen.) After this initial
burst of success came a fallow period, as Andersson and Ulvaeus honed
their song writing skills in a bid to leave behind the
Bang-a-Boomerang formula which had seen them widely rubbished as
another five-minute Eurovision
wonder.
 The
song that ended the slump was SOS, which restored ABBA to the
Top 10 and set in motion ten years of success. The song provided a
blueprint for most of their future singles, although an increasing use
of multi-tracked harmonies and more ambitious production techniques
added further dimensions to their later work.
There was something uniquely endearing about
their occasionally clumsy English ('Since many years I haven't seen a
rifle in your hand'), while the heavy Swedish accentuation of the
vocals ('I can see it in your ice') gave certain songs an added
poignancy (and sexiness!). And, although personal relations between
them were often frosty, the combination of Faltskog's ice-cool vocals
and Lyngstad's more fluent, sultry delivery was often striking.
At their best, ABBA could create a moment of
inspiration from deceptively simple ingredients: the acappella
introduction to Take A Chance On Me and the lilting harmonies
on Name Of The Game among the most memorable. It was these
touches of genius that set them apart from the many boy/girl groups
who later tried to recreate the ABBA sound. Another important facet of
ABBA's success was their pioneering use of the music video in
the pre-MTV 70s. Each single was accompanied by a 'promotional
film', which exposed the group to the widest possible market. The
strategy culminated in the 1977 cinema release ABBA: The Movie,
with Australian concert footage and interviews around a wafer-thin
'hapless-hack-seeks-ABBA' plot. Simple and sentimental it might have
been, but alongside the companion ABBA: The Album (1978), it
kept the bandwagon in top gear.
The pressures of such a level of stardom took
their inevitable toll on the relationships within the band, and the
announcement in 1978 that Ulvaeus and Faltskog were to divorce was
followed two years later by the end of the Andersson/Lyngstad
marriage. From such personal trauma came some of ABBA's finest work,
as their songs took on greater emotional depth, most successfully on
the 1980 Number 1 The Winner Takes It All. This was ABBA's
tour de
force, a brilliantly structured melodrama which put Faltskog's
fragile, emotional vocal center stage. Her appearance in the video as
a lonely, isolated figure heightened the effect, and the theme was
continued in later videos for One Of Us and The Day Before
You Came. The days of cheerful togetherness were long gone.
After one final studio album, the complex and
coolly received The Visitors (1981), ABBA briefly reunited a
year later to promote the lavish double-album set The Singles: The
First Ten Years (1982).
 After
that, although there was never an official split, all four decided to
concentrate on solo activities. Andersson and Ulvaeus stayed together
to co-write (with Tim Rice) the musical Chess, while Faltskog and
Lyngstad released solo albums with only moderate success.
After ten years of inactivity, the ABBA legend was rejuvenated in 1992, when a chart-topping tribute EP by
Erasure and the success of copyist bands such as Bjorn Again inspired
Polydor to launch a re-promotion of the group's work, led by the
singles compilation ABBA Gold (1992). Its worldwide success was
too great to be put down merely to the vogue for tacky 70s nostalgia:
Alvin Stardust may still draw a crowd, but he can't sell seven million
albums twenty years on!
In 1997, Polydor re-mastered and reissued the
complete set of albums, from Ring Ring to ABBA Live on
their mid-price list, while yet another compilation, Love Stories,
kept the tills ringing at the end of 1998. And in March 1999, the
ABBA story took a new direction when Mama Mia, a stage show
featuring 27 of their best-loved songs, opened in London's West End
and looked certain to keep fans entertained well into the 21st
century.
Daft haircuts and camp costumes aside, ABBA's popularity has endured and grown because of their musical legacy, a
beautifully crafted body of work which entitles Andersson and Ulvaeus
to take their places among the top songwriters of the modern era.
| The
Band |
Anni-Frid Lyngstad
vocals
Agnetha Faltskog
vocals
|
Benny Andersson
vocals, piano
Bjorn Ulvaeus
vocals, guitar
|
|
|
