ABBA: One of the most life-affirming bands of the modern era

Research autism applied to music

This is a post about one of the best and most life-affirming bands in the modern era, ABBA.¹

This is a strange topic for a post. Shouldn’t I be discussing how terrible politics is and always will be, with the demonic central bank owners endlessly fooling hordes of eye-glazed NPCs while a malevolent Demiurge tortures the god souls within us as the higher-level God is passive and peaced out? Well, sure, I’ll get back to that in future posts, don’t worry. And maybe reading about an old Swedish band isn’t your cup of tea. But I felt compelled to write this and you get what you pay for, right?

The specific impulse for this post is that I’ve been listening to ABBA for months on end, with some breaks here or there but to the point family members have told me it’s annoying and to turn it off.

So now it’s your turn.

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What is ABBA?

For those who don’t know ABBA, it was a Swedish band between the years 1972 and 1982. It were made up of two married couples, Benny Andersson with Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Björn Ulvaeus with Agnetha Fältskog; the band name was a palindrome of the first letters of their first names.

Left to right: Anni-Fred, Benny, Agnetha, Bjorn

Benny and Bjorn wrote and composed the music together and Anni-Fred and Agnetha provided the vocals. Benny had the mark of genius, I think; he was previously part of the Hep Stars, the the most successful of contemporary 1960s Swedish pop groups performing in the English language. Bjorn did not have prior mainstream success although he was a member of a regional band, the Hootenanny Singers. From watching Bjorn’s interviews and reading about him he comes across as an odd and mercurial fellow, obsessed with the latest and greatest in technology: it seems like he pushed the band to adopt cutting edge composing, editing, clothing, and other techniques. These techniques were quite successful both in the music and in the music videos, which hold up very well to this day. Benny credited 90% of the sound of ABBA to the girls, which seems very generous. Both girls had great and distinctive voices although Agnetha’s voice had a higher range.

The band shot to fame as the winners of the 1974 Eurovision contest with the song Waterloo. This is widely considered the best Eurovision performance of all time. Here it is:

They were playing to a pre-recorded track but the vocals, which were excellent, were live.

At the 50th anniversary celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest it was chosen as the best song in the competition's history.

Appearing on Eurovision

They were expected to be a one-hit wonder but came out with hit after hit, mostly in the English language but with some Spanish versions thrown in as well. They ultimately released nine albums: Ring Ring (1973), Waterloo (1974), ABBA (1975), Arrival (1976), The Album (1977), Voulez-Vous (1979), Super Trouper (1980), The Visitors (1981) and, after they got back together, Voyage (2021). The band is among the best-selling music artists in history with record sales estimated to be between 150 million to 385 million sold worldwide. The group was ranked the 3rd best-selling singles artists in the United Kingdom with a total of 11.3 million singles sold by 2012.

To compose their music the songwriters would sit in a cabin for weeks or months on end composing songs on a piano, and then add other instruments and effects thereafter. Although they released many dozens of songs Andersson thought they had maybe ten or fifteen good songs between them they ever wrote; a man of admirably high standards:

They didn’t like to tour much. I counted 106 concerts over their entire ten year history, pretty minimal for a worldwide sensation. Instead they preferred the process of music creation. Anni-Fred and Agnetha were excellent singers and they both looked sexy in the music videos released.

Some of their most famous songs include the following (links to the songs with music videos or ABBA performances where applicable): Honey Honey, Thank You for the Music (see below), ”Money, Money, Money”, Mamma Mia, Chiquitita, Dancing Queen, Lay All Your Love on Me, Super Trooper, “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”, The Name of the Game, Voulez-Vous (see below), Under Attack, One of Us, S.O.S., Does Your Mother Know?, Our Last Summer, Slipping Through My Fingers, The Winner Takes It All (see below), Take a Chance on Me, I Have a Dream, Fernando, “Andante, Andante”, Angel Eyes, among others.

Even though I listen to most of these regularly, the one I end up playing on repeat is Voulez-Vous, a little known song that received scant attention when it was released. It’s wild Dionysian energies are deeply attractive to my subconscious as the energies I project in real life are highly rigid and Apollonian, to borrow the terms from Nietzsche.

Lyric video:

Live:

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What happened to the band?

Eventually both couples divorced due to the fame they received, declining ratings and perhaps other reasons. "The Winner Takes It All" (1980), one of ABBA’s best of their later songs, and "One of Us" (1981), dealt with the painful experience of separating from a long-term partner. Ulvaeus said that when he gave the lyrics to the former to Fältskog to read "a tear or two welled up in her eyes. Because the words really affected her.”

The above song, along with Thank you for the Music, highlights the incredible range and power of her voice:

After they divorced and the band disbanded none of its members had major solo success on their own.

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The musical

Long after Abba disbanded Benny and Bjorn worked to bring Mamma Mia to Broadway. They were initially unenthused when pitched the idea but were eventually won over. The musical opened in the West End at the Prince Edward Theatre in 1999 and on Broadway in 2001. As of now it is the ninth longest-running Broadway show and the longest-running jukebox musical in Broadway history.

The plot of Mamma Mia is quite degenerate - a fatherless daughter about to get married in Greece discovers her aged mother is a blown out slut who slept condomless with three guys in a short period of time and any of them could be her father. She invites all three of them to her wedding and they come, and the film is about discovering who the father is as the wedding approaches as all three men reconnect with the mother. There’s other non-traditional elements including homosexuality and other such things one may notice. The plot is fun as long as you can stomach such degeneracy, but really that’s everywhere these days and the plot is mostly there just to serve as a driver for ABBA songs.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve spent hours trawling through various Youtube videos to find the best performances of the musical. The curtain call from the 2023 Australia cast I thought was particularly strong:

Or closer up during an actual performance (not a media call):

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The movies

The success of the theater production eventually led to two movies, Mamma Mia! and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Here’s the Mamma Mia song from the first movie where the mother discovers her three former lovers are there, sung and performed well by Meryl Streep:

And here’s Voulez Vous, an excellent rendition:

Here’s some behind-the-scenes of the making of that scene if you have interest.

The sequel is a kind of mental trip; the story is nonsensical and barely strung together in order for the rest of ABBA’s best songs to be played. This 40-minute review explaining the sequel’s surrealism was entertaining.

The cast loved filming the movies so much that they would love to do another, although the cast is getting old (and Julie Waters has cancer) and they’ve gone through all of the good songs already. There are rumors of a third movie in the works.

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Recent activities

Recently there was a British TV show called Mamma Mia! I Have a Dream to find talent for the Broadway show, much like the 2007 BBC show Any Dream Will Do about finding talent to perform in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It wasn’t very good and it received mediocre reviews.

ABBA reformed recently for a new album and a high tech hologram concert production in a specially designed London theater called ABBA Voyage. For this production the band members were de-aged by Industrial Light and Magic, again pushing the limits of technology as the band members are all in their 70s. I would love to see it in person one day; apparently it’s coming to Las Vegas soon. Here’s the trailer for the London version:

Benny recently released an album where he plays some of his favorite songs on piano. Not many songs of the album are from ABBA but the following one was quite good:

Or see him play it live for an appreciate crowd here. Look how much joy he brings.

Meanwhile, Bjorn has spent time on Tiktok where brief clips of ABBA songs have been quite popularly set to whatever Tiktok users want to share. There’s some information on it here.

There’s also a fairly new trend of speeding up ABBA songs using a mode called “nightcore”. Some of the songs actually sound better sped up, for example here is Angel Eyes:

And then there’s a thousand covers of ABBA songs on Youtube. I’ve particularly enjoyed Francisco Parrino’s piano covers. Here is one:

There’s also reaction videos to ABBA songs. The below guy Shnootz has reacted to every single ABBA song on his channel. I liked his Voulez-Vous reaction:

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Why was ABBA so good?

ABBA’s music was so good, as far as I can tell, because of Bjorn’s technology focus and the girls’ attractiveness and wonderful singing voices, but ultimately the “X” factor (to the extent one can pinpoint one individually, when it was really a blending of their talents into something unique) was Benny’s life-affirming personality. Every video I’ve seen him in he exudes joy and happiness. Let’s look at Benny’s natal Sun degree, which 23 degrees Sagittarius, Weber interpretation:

23-24 deg Sagittarius

Cancer-Capricorn with sensitive Pisces added makes a damp-dark degree for the Leo/Sagittarius sector of the zodiac. Hopeful and cheerful, possible poisoning, early death, and other dangers, all shortening the life span. Protection is needed. May be forced to travel, perhaps as a homeless refugee. Has Sagittarius bravery and optimism - and Piscean love and compassion which helps for charitable deeds. Often musical, perhaps a muse, bringer of joy, or caretaker.

Now, I don’t know him personally so can’t speak to the full interpretation, but “forced to travel”, “hopeful and cheerful”, “bravery and optimism”, “love and compassion” and especially “musical, perhaps a muse, bringer of joy” seem to fit the guy very well.

Anyway thank you for coming on this strange journey of ABBA with me. I know it’s far off from most of my other posts, but exploring new avenues is a big part of what makes this Substack place fun.

There will be plenty of time for gloom and doom in future posts.

Thanks for reading (and here, listening!).

1. Maybe Queen comes close, although I think ABBA has many more good songs.