Monday, February 06, 2017

The irresistible inner emptiness of ABBA

Karl French sums ABBA up in a sentence:

What their songs were increasingly revealing was just a very pop, rather Scandinavian soul, where irresistible pop melodies and harmonies complemented or carried lyrics that explored romantic misery and despair, inner emptiness, artistic exploitation, sexual predation, as well as palm trees, tigers, and the queasy desire to be someone’s fiddle.

I was an ABBAphile as a tween. I bought all their albums. As I listened to them over & over I delved ABBA’s slightly off English and sometimes problematic themes, while, you know, singing along. ABBA wrote more than one divorce song, did you know?



source: ABBA Unplugged by Karl French