“Abba’s success is more about us than them”: Giles Smith looks back at a 50-year love affair

Giles was 12 when he watched Abba win Eurovision in 1974 and was instantly besotted - and thus required to spend the next 20 years wrestling with The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. His thunderingly funny, fond and illuminating book - My My!: Abba Through The Years - traces their story, looks at the snobbery and critical mauling they endured and figures out how they made records so universally popular and which still move him to tears 50 years later. It’s also the best example of any book we’ve read that can explain the mechanics of music to a non-musician. It’s highly recommended, as is this podcast which alights upon …
… a 50 year-old story - “for 42 of which they haven’t existed”.
.. the vicious early press reaction - “calculatingly commercial”, “dispassionate” …
… the divine clunkiness of their early TV appearances.
… the sense of the melancholy we’ve attached to their music - and why.
... the immense value of splitting up early and never reforming or publicly falling out.
… the immaculate construction of Dancing Queen (which opens with the second half of the chorus) and why “there are two types of wedding disco - ones that start with Dancing Queen and terrible ones.”
… the maturity of Abba’s lyrics - about marriages, relationships, children and other subjects pop music rarely tackles.
… why Abba Voyage is so affecting that he’s seen it three times.
… and Muriel’s Wedding, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and other key factors in The Comeback.
Order Giles Smith’s My My!: Abba Through The Ages here …
www.amazon.co.uk/My-ABBA-Thro...
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[@53puskas53]

The blue top Agnetha wore for Eurovision justified the introduction of colour television on it's own.

[@staffangunnarson2421]

I wonder if Brian Connolly bought his outfit for the cover of Sweet Fanny Adams - also released in April 1974 - in the same London shop? ABBA's costume designer went there to get his textiles for their stage and TV shows.

[@christianoazzuro6711]

..'there's nothing that happens on an Abba single that doesn't happen on a purpose"...'it was built to last"....well stated.

[@alexioverdo5225]

His analysis was pretty detaild,punctual and most of his points really interesting and precise. Abba's songs were deceptively simple but really very complicated.There were too many things that were going on within an Abba song than what was seemingly obvious.Even after so many years of listening some may still discover plenty of astonishing little details that were soothing under the surface.Abba is one music phenomenon.

[@ozzy-o8215]

and like the beatles produced their best album as their last album. The Visitors is a masterpiece on every level.

[@chelseacharger]

ABBA were actually very good in concert. Even their harshest critics couldn't question their musicality. They usually got attacked for being 'too clinical' and the rather stunted stage dialogue. It's not so easy to get your personality across when performing in a language that isn't your native tongue. Yes, the mature subject matter of their songs. Three of the group members were already in their late 20's when they won Eurovision and Agnetha had just turned 24. Bjorn and Agnetha were married with a young child. Benny and Frida already had children from previous relationships.in the 1960's.

[@jamesswapinski9190]

Give them credit where it's due.Those were very well done recordings...They even wore down a critical schmuck like me

[@alexioverdo5225]

Giles said that "Waterloo" was the only glam rock song they recorded and nothing like this sounded this kind of genre in their later discography which ain't really accurate.2nd and 3rd album did have such stuff.(i.e.'So Long"/'Watch Out"/"King Kong Song") .He also said that before Abba's 'Waterloo' entry, ESC was boring as usual and thgat after 'Waterloo" nothing changed the constest for the next 10-15 years..But of course it changed cause its musicscape went a bit more colourful,uptempo and less boring.

[@andrewmacdonald3667]

Abba was hard to escape in Australia, which was no fun for a Rock Snob like myself. Still, I will read this book.

[@sianwarwick633]

Vitamin ABBA

[@spinynorman8217]

Lost in Music was a fabulous book, l'm sure this will be just as good.

[@eugenbeer6321]

Really interesting... but you cannot ignore the impact of Mamma Mia the Musical and the films...

[@candelise]

Abba records sounded expensive in a way that most British pop music didn't at the time. Abba productions sounded like Fortnam and Mason as opposed to the Pound Shop British pop music back then. It goes some way into explaining their songs' longevity.

[@alexioverdo5225]

After '82-'86/early '87 Abba was a kinda shameful,embarassing non-acceptable brand.But from the very late '80s (around the Stock/Aitken/waterman's trend) Abba's absence had started to be visible.Bjorn Again's arousing "underground success" were a fine proof of a desired past nostalgia until things led to Erasure the 2 Aussie Abba flavoured movies the Gold era,Mamma mias,Voyage era.Today their legacy is cemented and their reputation is crowned with the solid glory they deserved and the acknowledged class they had carried.And there's still nobody to touch them in their field.

[@foxbasealpha]

I wish Voyage would travel to other places like the US.

[@pcch7831]

One of the producers has said they've held talks with Australia AND the USA. So I'm sure there will be an ABBA Arena in the US one day, Las Vegas perhaps.

[@jans724]

@@pcch7831 There has been some talks about NYC

[@sue-ellen4721]

As an older woman I've come to appreciate Björn's lyrics together with the music more and more. They got more and more interesting until The Visitors album.

[@sianwarwick633]

Talk Talk had their quite slow version of The Day Before you Came, of course. ABBA allowed us teenage girls to shriek again, thank god. No more prog rock. I am running to look at their 1974 Eurovision appearance

[@loratadine921]

Blancmange.

[@jackharriet4814]

Does the book mention the legendary Australian TV host/music impresario Ian 'Molly' Meldrum, on the subject of how/why Abba were huge first in that country? In fact does Mark and David know who Molly is? - if they don't they should. Founded and hosted Countdown - the Aussie sort-of Top Of The Pops program in the 70s-80s - and had a huge influence on lots of music careers or access to the Australian market for international acts. Anyhow - didn't he come over and do an interview with Abba early on, and this played a role in breaking Abba in Australia? No doubt Molly would have played a part Aussie Abbamania.

[@christianoazzuro6711]

Molly's interference with Abba resulted the re-introducing of these Swedes to the Brits,... for good.In an interview to an Aussie journalist (around 2013 i think) Benny sent a very beautiful wholehearted sincere 'thank you" video to Molly.Molly was rather unsuspicious when he was presented that video message from Benny on air and suddenly got very moved seemed to lost his words for some secs and got kinda wet eyed.

[@user-dw3hl4sh2w]

I was 16/17 in 1974, None of my male friends watched the Eurovision Song Contest. We liked Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and Zeppelin. Abba was a group my wife and her friends secretly liked. They had to pretend to like the bands the boys liked. .

[@KevKavanagh]

This is too much, OK, I confess! I once took three members of Fugazi to see Bjorn Again, in Australia (at their insistence, Ian MacKaye not included). From memory it may have been Brendan Canty chanting most vociferously for Dancing Queen pre encore.

[@otterlyso]

He looks a bit like Bjorn. Or is it Benny?

[@marcbolan1818]

ABBA died off as punk and new wave were making them unfashionable. They peaked and pulled the plug none too soon to preserve their history. Costello, Glenn Matlock, and many more will name check them for their production and piano.

[@paulmcevoy7003]

His view of Eurovision now compared to then is actually opposite. People could laugh at how ridiculous the badly written but extremely distinctive tunes were in the 70s . Whereas now every country comes out with uniformly banal garbage that even Simon Cowell would approve of .