Among the many victims of Covid-19 is this year's Eurovision Song Contest. When its cancelation was first announced, Mark harked back to its Boom-Bang-a-Bang Ding-Ding-a-Dong heyday and talked to Dana about a lovely exception to that rule. Last night, the BBC, in lieu of the actual competition, invited viewers to vote for the all-time greatest Euro-blockbuster. The winners, not surprisingly, were the most successful act ever to come out of Eurovision. In 1974, a quartet of Swedes emerged victorious and never looked back, except to check whether their hot pants had split:
It was all more harmonious in the old days. One recalls the 1990 Eurovision finals in Zagreb, when the charming hostess, Helga Vlahović, presented her own fair country as the perfect Eurometaphor: "Yugoslavia is very much like an orchestra," she cooed. "The string section and the wood section all sit together." Alas, barely were the words out of her mouth before the wood section was torching the string section's dressing rooms, and the hills were alive only with the ancient siren songs of ethnic cleansing and genital severing. Lurching into its final movement, Yugoslavia was no longer the orchestra, only the pits. In an almost too poignant career trajectory, the lovely Miss Vlahović was moved from music programming to Croatian TV's head of war information programming.
The Eurovision Song Contest has never quite recovered, but oh, you should have seen it in its glory days, when the rich national cultures that gave the world Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Purcell, Debussy, and Grieg bandied together to bring us "La-La-La" (winner, 1968), "Boom-Bang-A-Bang" (1969), "Ding-Dinge-Dong" (1975), "A Ba Ni Bi" (1978), "Diggy Loo Diggi Ley" (1984), and my personal favorite, "Lat Det Swinge," the 1985 winner by the Norwegian group Bobbysocks. The above songs are nominally sung in Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, and even English, but in fact it's the universal language of Eurogroovy: "Ja, ja, boogie, baby, mit der rock 'n' roll."
So, after the Russophobia of Copenhagen, let us recall happier times for Eurovision, and celebrate its gift to the world:
My my!
At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah!
And I have met my destiny in quite a similar way...
What a night it was in Brighton for four Swedes so obscure that the BBC's David Vine couldn't even get their names right:
That's the 1974 Eurovision winner from a four-Swede pop combo called Abba. In the years that followed, they were the country's second highest money earner after Volvo. But, globally speaking, "Waterloo" was their Waterloo – from the Duke of Wellington's perspective, I mean. It put them on the map, winning them the big prize from the protean pan-European institution, and still the least worst functioning. The song represents the high watermark, or the high Waterloo mark, of European unity. Not for nothing did former EU Commissioner Chris Patten, the late Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh and the Deputy French Foreign Minister Charles Josselin perform a ten-minute Abba medley at the 2000 Asia Regional Forum in Bangkok. As an artifact of European identity, the group's first continent-wide hit is strangely emblematic:
Waterloo!
I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo!
Promise to love you forevermore
Waterloo!
Couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo!
Knowing my fate is to be with you...
In 1945, Europe was in ruins, America had won the war, and, if the Continentals weren't exactly promising to love the Yanks forevermore, they knew that their fate was to be with them, and they couldn't escape even if they wanted to. The US security umbrella and the Eurovision Song Contest both date back to the immediate post-war period. The idea was to help build a continent in which you could sing "Waterloo" rather than fight it, and, if in their excessive generosity the Americans accelerated the Europeans' inclination to softness and decadence, well, it's not their problem, and the Euros might have seen it coming. As Abba's lyric shrewdly anticipates:
The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself.
After winning Eurovision in 1974 Abba bestrode the world like a colossus - if you can imagine any self-respecting colossus going out in public in velveteen knickerbockers, silver boots, pearl kimono and tricorn hat. And that was just the boys. "One of my favorite outfits," said Björn, "was a sequinned blue leotard and cape." But few men who go around in sequinned blue leotards have given us numbers like "Voulez Vous" or "Fernando".
For Benny and Björn, it wasn't always clear that they would meet their destiny in quite a similar way. They were brought together four decades ago by Stig Anderson, former lead singer of Stig Anderson and his Mashed Creampuffs and lyricist of the shrewdly insightful hit "The Girls Who Know How Are Found In The Country", still fondly recalled by many Swedes. At that time, Björn was with a group called the Hootenanny Singers, and Stig was canny enough to get them to record a Swedish version of Tom Jones' "Green Green Grass of Home". But Björn had ambitions to write his own material and with Stig collaborated on "Froken Frederiksson", a song about a man who makes the mistake of wandering on to his balcony in a dressing-gown on a breezy day and, after a sudden gust, finds himself reported to the vice squad.
Benny, meanwhile, was playing keyboards in Sweden's top pop group, the Hep Stars. It was Stig who had the bright idea of getting him and Björn together. You would have thought a Hep Star would be incompatible with a Hootenanny Singer, but, in their mutually exclusive ways, both appellations demonstrate Benny and Björn's remarkable ear for the Anglo-American pop vernacular. In 1969 Björn appeared on the same television show as Agnetha, a teen singer riding high with her hit "Snovit Och De Sju Dvargarna". For his part, Benny had met the flame-tressed Anni-Frid, a household name after her own 1967 smash, "Din". Agnetha and Frida were young, beautiful, on their way up. Benny and Björn were fading Hep Stars. To the great Abba conundrum - how did those two blokes pull those two birds? - there is no rational answer. But in 1970, in a restaurant in Gothenburg, they made their debut together as a group called the Engaged Couples.
Stig was dissatisfied with this name and started using their intials. Unfortunately for Stig, Abba was also the name of Sweden's largest tuna-canning company. The perennial songwriting question - which came first, the lyrics or the tuna? - has, in this instance, a relatively simple answer. But Abba the fish canner agreed to share the name provided that Abba the group was "clean, well-behaved and successful".
They were, mostly - though Frida and Agnetha never got on and once hurled their gold records at each other. Their so-called "happy divorces" were revealed years later to be considerably more painful for the girls than the boys, as hinted at in their plangent later ballads.
But they were certainly successful: a year after changing names, Abba sang "Waterloo" at Eurovision, wiping out the opposition, who surely felt the sting of the lyric:
Waterloo!
I was defeated, you won the war...
The group's most distinctive quality – the sense that their grasp of Hit Parade English doesn't quite match their lyrical ambition – was present from the first. With hindsight, they were pioneering Babelfish translations years before the Internet – but in rhyme! I always loved this quatrain:
The Winner Takes It All
The loser standing small
Beside the victory
That's my destiny...
Tim Rice once said to me how much he liked that slightly off-kilter translation quality to their lyrics. On last week's Mark Steyn Show, he recalled how, when he worked with Benny and Björn on the musical Chess, they sent over a tune with a dummy lyric for the first two lines:
One Night In Bangkok
Makes a hard man humble...
Tim knew enough not to mess with that. Benny and Björn are much mocked for their somewhat shaky grasp of English pop conventions, but the boys are, after all, writing in their second language: they were bilingual songwriters at a time when most pop writers were barely lingual. By the mid-Seventies they were doing boffo biz in a multitude of languages. They had hits from Britain all the way across the Continent to Russia - after Stig did a deal to start taking payments from behind the Iron Curtain in oil, which the group then sold on the Rotterdam spot market. The oil-price collapse in the early Eighties caused Stig tax problems and nearly resulted in the group going to jail. One feels sure that King Carl-Gustav - whose lovely bride, Silvia, was the inspiration for "Dancing Queen" - would have pardoned them. But relations between the band and Stig soured and never recovered. By 1981 they had to confront the awkward truth of their own lyric:
Nothing left to say
No more ace to play.
The boys went on to write Chess. And that was it, and looks like it always will be. The history book on the shelf/Will not be repeating itself: In 2000 they turned down a billion-dollar offer from an Anglo-American consortium to re-form for a series of concerts. "We have never made a comeback. Almost everyone else has. I think there is a message in that," said Benny. Or was it Björn? Anyway, it was the one with a face like a grinning monkey. "It was another time, I was another person," said Björn. Unless it was Benny. Anyway, it was the one with the beard. Or the one without. The one who was married to Agnetha. Or the one who was married to Anni-Frid. Or the one who divorced Agnetha and married an Agnetha lookalike, Lena Kalersjo. Either way, we will not look on their like again. The group who gave us "Ring, Ring", "Honey, Honey", "Money, Money, Money" and "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme" are now saying Never, Never, Never, Don't Ring Ring Us, We Won't Ring Ring You, No Matter How Much Money Money Money You Gimme Gimme Gimme, Honey Honey.
Perhaps it's for the best. A reunion would have presented insuperable problems. While many fans would have been curious to see Agnetha's once-famous year-on-year award-winning Best Bottom in the World celebrate its demi-centenary by squeezing into those silver lamé hotpants one last time, her co-star Frida - the brunette one - is now an environmental campaigner and refuses to wear anything other than natural fibres, which pretty much puts the entire Abba wardrobe out of bounds. Incidentally, though Frida was supposedly eaten up by resentment at the way no one ever put in a word for her bottom, posterity has given her posterior the last laugh. Agnetha is riddled with insecurity and now lives as a recluse on a remote Swedish island riddled with in-house security. "I wish I had known about yoga during the Abba years," she says bitterly. "Then I wouldn't have wanted to drink champagne before going on stage."
Since it all went belly up in a haze of the occasional glass of champagne, Benny - or Björn - has recorded an album of Swedish birdsong hailed by one leading Nordic ornithologist as "the perfect introduction to bird-watching", while Björn - or Benny - has made an album of Swedish folk music called Klinga Mina Klocka (which means "toll my bell"). Just a few months ago, I chanced to find myself in Orsa, a Swedish town of 5,000 good souls, 500 of whom speak the local language of Orsamål. It was there that Benny - if not Björn - founded an Orsamål folk group called Orsa Spelmän. All very pastoral and Dalecarlian dialectical after a life of gold-lamé Europop. Anni-Frid, now a grandmother, has become a German princess, married to Count Ruzzo Reuss von Plauen. Agnetha has lurched through a string of doomed romances with, among others, Hakan Lonnback, the psychiatrist who was helping her work on her marriage, and Thorbjörn Brander, the police sergeant protecting her after a kidnap threat.
But most Abba fans would rather not think of Hakan and Thorbjörn, preferring to recall the days when Agnetha was happily married to Benny, if indeed he was the one she was married to. The Abba revival craze is still going strong - through tribute groups such as Björn Again, cover versions by Erasure, B*witched, and in the West End and on Broadway and on the big screen Mamma Mia. There's a large element of kitsch in all that. But, from the rubble of their marriages, they produced the aching harmonies of "One Of Us", as near as pop gets to the cry of pure pain. Underneath those sequinned leotards, Benny and Björn are two of the best pop writers of the last half-century.
But "The Day Before You Came" will never come again. Abba will never re-form: Agnetha and Frida are happy in their baggy sweaters, Benny and Björn in their Armani and Orsamål. And it's their millions of fans who are left finally facing their Waterloo. As Benny might put it, in his Swedish folkie vein, ask not for whom the klocka klings. It klings to thee.
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31 Member Comments
In 1981, Michael B. Tretow -- the engineer who basically created ABBA's sound -- teamed up with singer (and labelmate) Ted Gärdestad, and recorded, as "Caramba", a single self-titled album that is my favorite thing to come out of the ABBA family tree.
Here's the track listing. Don't get distracted by the fact that the sides are "Side 1" and "Side A". There's a lot more wrong with it than that!
Blaztah 1 (Side 1)
1."Ali Baba" – 3:51
2."Spottnjik" – 3:51
3."Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot" – 3:23
4."Eine Feine" – 3:43
5."Fido" – 3:47
Blaztah A (Side A)
1."Aitho" – 3:28
2."Anna Kapoe" – 4:17
3."Donna Maya" – 3:07
4."Ahllo" – 2:42
5."Carhumba" – 3:37
As you may be able to work out from the above, Caramba's lyrics were always written performed, and recorded in a clear, sparkling, well-enunciated, and entirely incomprehensible nonsense language.
While Tretow and Gärdestad have copped to perpetrating "Caramba", there may have been other artists involved -- maybe even other ABBA members? It's impossible to be sure, because this is how the members of Caramba were credited on the album sleeve:
Carlos Ih Lura, ahllo
Zoltan Zull, violotta
Dr. Fritz Höfner, baribasso
Tudor Ludor, batterie
Abdullah Presley, tomba
Zingo Allah, prutto
Ihto Amin, paahuve
Gaston El Ton Yon, pianissimo
King Nam, a nam
Clapton Combo, gitaronimo
King Kong, tango
Hazze Kamikaze, teknico del son
Giorgio Martini, producto
I've always thought that Zingo Allah played a mean tomba, and the Clapton Combo of course need no introduction -- who among us has not envied their skill with the many-sided gitaronimo? The production was second to none:
Recordeli pour Studio Garage De Garbage
Picturella par Bengto Hoo
Coloretta par cartong: Torsk Prod
Swedes and Norwegians clamored for more Caramba, of course. The album peaked (in both countries) at only #14; however, the unfathomably catchy single "Hubba Hubba Zoot-Zoot" shot to #1 in both countries, and continues to this day to inspire truly hilarious YouTube videos, which I will refrain from linking here, but the Donald Trump one (by "iWashtaging Suzimiya") will change the way you look at DJT's rallies, forever.
I always enjoy the fact that ABBA enjoyed fantastic success in Australia in 1976 and then decades later, the Australia movie Muriel's Wedding lead the revival of their music in the 90's. Up until then anything ABBA was considered daggy as we say. Mom and dad never got to go to their concerts but insisted on watching anything to do with ABBA on the TV during that Australian tour, much to my annoyance.
Kathy Shaidle wrote below: 'The most... unlikely lyrics for a hit song ever?....'
Indeed...and the only ABBA song I ever liked [it's somewhere in my singles collection].
It must have had an influence on me as a composer because, in 1988, when my band, Shadowplay, was recording our first album, I wrote a a song called Normandy.
A high [or low] light:
[CHORUS]
Normandy
The times were against us
Oh, oh Nor-man-dy
Normandy
We can't lose this
Oh, oh Nor-man-dy
[THIRD VERSE]
Charlemagne, she is in torment
We shared our desperate lives
Come and hold me — On to victory
Damn the cynics...Damn our ways...
Do I, perhaps, have Swedish blood?
SIDENOTE: The title of the album was The Camp Of The Saints.
A recent(ish) favourite is Portishead covering S.O.S. from the Highrise soundtrack. Eerie and melancholy and wonderful.
Pop Muzak. Sweden's answer to Barry Manilow.
Where else on the interweb would you find the word "Plangent"? Worth the price of membership alone.
One of my favourite Bjorn and Benny compositions wasn't actually recorded by Abba. In 1985 the boys produced and wrote songs for a Swedish brother and sister duo called Gemini. The standout song called Just Like That was a minor hit in various countries and is well worth a listen via YouTube.
I always thought that ABBA was the Swedish 1910 Fruit Gum Company and that ABBA is Swedish meaning two hot chicks and two dweebs. Now, thanks to Mark,I have learned the two inexplicable dweebs had some musical talent.
Just a quick note: Bjorn and Benny didn't end their musical efforts at "Chess" but later composed "Kristina", a musical concerning the immigration of a large percentage of the Swedish population in the 19th century to America. I'm surprised it was never produced here.
Calls to mind the segment of the 'making of' Fargo feature that came with the DVD. I can't remember the Swedish actor's name but he was fascinated with all the Swedish town names in Minnesota and the Dakotas and how much more alive the old Swedish culture was there than back in his homeland.
Peter Stormare
Back in the 70's, my friends could be divided into two camps - those who enjoyed going out to the local disco for an evening of dance and those who viewed disco with considerable disdain. And for the latter, no performers provoked greater disdain than ABBA. I always viewed them as a guilty pleasure. Thanks to Mark's insights, my pleasure has increased and my guilt somewhat abated.
High on the epic list of things I never understood rank both ABBA and the Eurovision Song Contest. Oh, and the 1970s. Bad combo. (Fondue is #1, since you ask.) Not that I don't bob my head to some of their more agreeable tunes, but they make bubblegum taste like broccoli.
Most of the musical stuff that Mark talks about ("It's a 3/4 beat with 16 in 4 and a double on the first"*) is way over my head, but adds great credibility to his articles. I'm more "no idea what it is but I like the sound it makes"
So when I recall "One Night in Bangkok" I also find the music in my head blending in with "Hot Town, Summer in the City" by Lovin' Spoonful. No idea why.
*Yes, I made that up.
Well played sir. My sentiments exactly.
Indeed, the only other writer I've come across with such a fine technical grasp of music is H L Mencken.
I got heavily into ABBA long after the height of their popularity. While much of their upbeat stuff was very good, it was the more thoughtful ("Andante, Andante" and "Fernando"), and in some cases even heart-wrenching songs that really set them apart, at least in my view. In that latter category, in addition to "One of Us" and "The Winner Takes it All," there was of course "Knowing Me, Knowing You." All of these were big sellers. Perhaps less well known, both from their "Visitors" LP were "Like an Angel Passing Through My Room" and most especially "Slipping Through My Fingers," meaningful for anyone with kids, but for divorcing couples dealing with child custody issues, had to be an absolute killer emotionally.
But, these were the precise issues the ABBA couples were themselves dealing with. How the guys had the guts to present the songs to the girls to perform is hard for me to imagine. And, the girls performed them. Maybe they found this therapeutic, or maybe they thought the songs could be of value to their fans, and did them for that reason. Whatever. I'm glad they did them. They're great songs.
One couldn't not love ABBA, unless of course, one had cool and discerning taste. I loved them but my Europop vote is irrevocably committed jointly to Focus's Hocus Pocus, and Europe's Final Count Down. I don't know much about Europop but I know what I like.
It seems to me that there's something wrong with the staging in that Eurovision clip. One could either get the impression that ABBA is either a six piece band -- two guitars, drums, keyboard, two girl singers, or just two girl singers with an anonymous backing band. Probably the first thing.
Also, from a distance, the guitar player looks like he might be in KISS.
In the history of entertainment has there ever been a better business decision than Stig Anderson choosing to have ABBA record in English?
I was present but socially comatose during ABBA's heyday. When I finally could/did hear their music, I loved it and so appreciate this review of early, intervening and current information about them. Song-of-the-Week backstories have it all... genius, intrigue, conflict, reversals... and as many poignant endings as happy ones. 'Thank you, Mark, for all of them!
Oh, that ever helpful auto-correct!
Ask not to whom the lycra klings. It klings to thee.
The surprise in the voice of the announcer when the conductor entered dressed as Napoleon made the whole clip.
I think the girls got along. Hear me out. Not that long ago, I watched hours of video and interviews of the group, and it struck me that the two girls were true friends just from watching their body language and how they spoke to each other during some of the filming -- even when not the main part of the shot, you could sometimes hear them talking like sisters or good friends do. Particularly at the end, when the marriages were falling apart, the two girls seemed bonded. What do I know though? It was just my observation. Then I found an interview of Frida after the band broke up where she explained that she and Agnetha were good friends and that the rumors of their rivalry were untrue. Frida explained the two girls had their own separate relationship from the boys, that they supported each other since the two girls were usually the only two women around and women typically need and want female companionship (which, as an aside, I think it true), and they also had to support each other on stage since the two were the main vocalists and their schedule was grueling. I thought my observation was completely useless knowledge until I read that line your article. And now I think I didn't waste that day watching those ABBA videos, interviews, and the ABBA movie since I now have something to offer here.
P.S. I intended to write girls and women as I did. And after rereading this post, I decided not to change a thing.
The most... unlikely lyrics for a hit song ever? Discuss...
Oh Kathy, that category is so large it'd be like picking out the "best" grain of sand on the beach.
Little known fact: it was originally "Stalingrad". But while it scans the same and there are plenty of rhymes (treat me bad, make you sad, at my pad), Benny and Björn feared perhaps it was too soon.
Good lord, really? I'm amazed! And also: I'm glad that ABBA dropped that idea!
But can you imagine the scene in 1974? The guys and girls come out in their spangly suits and sing -
Stalingrad!
General von Paulus had to yield
(de-nah nah nah nah nah na-nah nah)
Stalingrad!
Couldn't take the Rostov oil field
Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa
(etc)
Abattoir! Here We Go Again....
There is a place deep in the recesses of my mind where it is always 1976, and Agnetha is the dancing queen.
I watched this, in the pub with my mate Steve. Bricklayer's Arms. I was underage. Just 16.
Hi, Mark
ABBA is missed. Missed more is the idea that they could have been happy together both as couples and as friends. With everything in the world in their favor . . . Ask not to whom the lycra killings. It kings to thee.
I look forward to hearing you in for Rush tomorrow. You are my favorite fill-in host.
All the best,
Left Coaster