Abba Inducted Into the Bands Rock NYC Really Really Like Post Of General Interest

admin|November 4, 2009

Is there a better album in the known Universe than Abba’s Gold? A greatest hits album the way Bob Marley’s Legend is a greatest hits album; a greatest hits album as a direct hit tpo your pleasure zone. A relentless tour de force of oddly syntaxed pop and roll glory setting the stage for everyone who would come after and, in every where but the States, the entire field of pop yet to come in the 80s. Abba weren’t only the forefathers of Duran Duran, they were also their daddy’s.

So it was great pride and humility and I award Abba the Bands Rock NYC Really Really Likes award. I like em because they’re great and because they are what they appear to be: Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson write songs for them and their girlfriends and later wives Anifred Lynstad and Agnetha Faltskog to sing.

Abba came out of Sweden to win the Eurovision Song Contest -a truly ghastly waste of time for the most part, with “Waterloo” in 1974 and never looked back.

Here is a link to Wikipedia’s discography singles page for Abba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABBA_discography#Singles because there is no way I can copy it here. Hit single after hit single in country after country: Sweden, UK, Australia, Japan… everywhere you can imagine except the States. And they are all just great. My big sister Nadia, her eight year old granddaughter Miriam, Nadia’sdaughter, me, we are all in love with Abba. When my great-niece Lindsay was six months old she wouldn’t go to sleep without “Take A Chance On Me” playing.

The US never really got the message till the Broadway musical based upon Abba songs “Mama Mia” became a hit in 2000. Certainly Americans became nostalgic for a sound they never listened to. ABBA were long gone by then but between the worldwide smash musical and the world wide smash movie Meryl Streep songs I had known like breathing (they were huge in both England and Lebanon), “Dancing Queen” anyone? “Fernando”? “Waterloo”,

“Winner takes It All” -yeah, they grew up and got divorced and the songs got harder and sweeter at the same time. “I was in your arms, feeling I belonged there, I figured it made sense builing me a fence”. Again, the lyric is always a little off-kilter, a little English for beginings. “The winner takes it all, the loser standing small….?” Who says standing small, right? Still, if Dana Stewart was crying over this song I could kinda dig it!

I would guess that Abba have never been even vaguely considered for the rock and roll hall of fame though the entire pop movement and every synth band of the 80s owes them big time. Including MJ -they’re kissing cousins.

So, for those of you playing at home, here is the entire inductees to the Bands Rock NYC Really Really Like Post Of General Interest:
Yes
ABBA