Yup - that is ABBA, the phenomenon!
ABBA <--then and now-->
Today is a special occasion. First we have a new month with new hopes and opportunities. I made a resolution that I would write till my hands fell off this month. But first, here is a guest post. Because guests have right of way and hence today's "write of way"
Ashesh this is apart from everything, a congratulatory post wishing you all the best in your new assignment. Full Power! This is also a thank you post because I have come thus far in my recovery from the nasty illness that grabbed me like the hunchback grabbed Sinbad, thanks to your unstinted support.
Okay on with the show.
Many of us have sweet memories of ABBA - I had more than a crushette on Anni-Frid Lyngstad (heck she is now 76)
Over to Ashesh:
“You’re a teaser, you turn ‘em on
Leave ‘em burning and then you’re gone”
~Dancing Queen, ABBA
A living room with a sofa and a TV and an ancient music system is where this story started. The system had a tape player and a child was inserting a tape into it. Closing the tape receptacle, he pressed play.
That child was me. The band was ABBA.
It is 2021 and ABBA are back with a new album called Voyage which I heard on Spotify recently. I then saw a small clip showing Bjorn talk about how they approached the album and decided they would ignore the modern music and bring back what they recorded before in the ‘70s. The result is an album that awoke the child in me again and I listened to it and took a trip down memory lane. The memories are what I am going to talk about today.
I was a young warthog when I first heard ABBA and I think the song Eagle was the one that I could understand back then. It seemed steeped in fantasy. How could eagles know everything? How far away did they come from?
I also remember watching a cover of Dancing Queen on MTV back in the day. Those songs were our anthem.Ilived in a world populated by ABBA, The Beatles and fairy tales.
It was easy to associate ABBA with dragon slaying. Songs like I Have a Dream told me to be brave. Songs like Mamma Mia made me dance because I just could not sit still when that song came on, even though it would be much later, post an actual breakup that Mamma Mia would hit very differently. But let us not get ahead of ourselves and tell this tale properly.
ABBA took me to a different world. I was
too young then to appreciate the depth of songs the likes of which Queen had
brought out. I was in fact too young to appreciate the depth of ABBA’s own
music. The depth of the lyrics was lost on me. It was just the tune and Agnetha Fältskog’s voice that I grooved to.
Then slowly I started to grow older and ABBA started to grow with me. Suddenly I found a song like The Winner Takes It All chaperoning me through a bad exam result. I think what made me wake up to what ABBA was really capable of was the movie Mamma Mia, which had Pierce Brosnan sing SOS about Meryl Streep and Meryl Streep sing The Winner Takes It All.
For me, this meant a total ABBA revisit. I started from the first and ended at the last. I believe kids these days have an abusive word for what happened to my mental capacities upon rediscovering ABBA as an adolescent. A part of me also started delving into rock like anything and seeing as I had grown a little, I stared falling in love with the music of the ‘70s. But, try as I may, I couldn’t stop putting on ABBA and grooving from time to time.
And now it is 2021 and ABBA’s Voyage is a return to the early 2000’s and a music system with a tape player and a boy going on a trip to a war torn land while Fernando plays. In a world dominated by EDM, it’s nice to know that ABBA are back. In a world where cartoons and comics have taken on dark undertones and the world’s many problems are bogging us down, I feel good because a band from Sweden have brought out a new album and reminded me that black clouds have silver linings.
It would be perfect if I still had that tape though!
Back to me - Folks do comment here and share your own thoughts on ABBA and their reunion and anything else you'd like to from that era. We really, really need your voice here. Don't leave it unwritten!
I will leave you with my favorite Abba song
Thank you so much for this!
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure kid!
DeleteI enjoyed the sound of Abba a lot, but by the time I became aware of them I was doing my Masters and was very preoccupied with my college work. I think I grew to appreciate them much later. I loved the movie, Mamma Mia. Sheer delight.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for commenting. I too appreciated them more in later college days when they were all the rage and Abba-the movie came to the theaters. Yes Mamma Mia was such fun!
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