Gold

ABBA

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The Craft of the Hit Song

An entire industry has grown up around the worship of ABBA, the two former couples from Sweden who became one of the pop powerhouses of the 1970s. There's the long-running Broadway revue Mamma Mia!, books, anthologies, and even a museum in Stockholm, all dedicated to the glory of pop songs that can seem, to unbelievers, like light-weight, airbrushed nothingness.

Love or hate ABBA, this much is difficult to dispute: The singles this quartet released between 1974 and 1979 are models of impeccable craft, ranking with the most carefully sculpted radio fare of all time. Principal songwriters Bjoern Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson started out like many in Europe circa 1970—they learned to sing in English, and tried to imitate the radiant refrains and gilded vocal harmonies of the Beatles. They got good at it right away (see "Waterloo," the first worldwide hit from 1974) and grafted that stuff onto the beats of the 1970s, notably disco and Euro-style funk. Then ABBA polished everything to a blinding sheen.

That gloss explains some of the success, especially considering that in terms of nuts and bolts, songs like "Mamma Mia" are fairly inconsequential. But some of the group's other massive singles—"SOS," "Knowing Me, Knowing You," and the unstoppably buoyant, often overlooked "Fernando"—contain refrains so damn giddy they can't be easily purged from the brain. These tightly scripted songs are an excellent starter kit for those wanting to investigate the DNA of post-Beatles pop.

Genre: Pop
Released: 1992, Polar/Polydor
Key Tracks: "SOS," "Dancing Queen," "Waterloo," "Take a Chance on Me," "Fernando"
Catalog Choice: Arrival
Next Stop: The Cardigans: Life
After That: Duran Duran: Rio
Book Page: 2

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Comments:

#1 from Suzuki Fairings - 09/25/2008 10:14

I got this CD like 10 years ago and I have to say I’m never tired of it. So fresh and the songs are just melodic that you can hear it from 1 to 19 without being bored.

#2 from Paulo Cunha, Brazil - 11/13/2008 5:13

If you love Music, and does the Music your love, this guide is the perfect wine.

Thank you Tom;

Best from Brazil!

Cunha

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About 1,000 Recordings

Celebrate the joy, the revelation, the mystery, the fun, the sheer shivers-up-the-spine pleasure of great music.

Essential operas. Milestone rock albums. An education in the blues. The world of world. Classical from Bach to Bartók to Beethoven to Brahms. And dozens of unexpected gems, surprising discoveries, and long-lost masterpieces.

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