‘I could never let you go …’ – The Mail & Guardian (2024)

‘I could never let you go …’ – The Mail & Guardian (1)

Thank you for the music: The Swedish supergroup Abba performs on stage in New York in the late Seventies. Photo: Getty Images

Let me start with a spoiler alert — this was meant to be a review of the really good biography of Abba, recently written by Giles Smith. But what it has ended up being is an opinion piece on the Swedish musical legends and their place in the musical pantheon of people of a certain age and demographic.

This was not intentional or unintentional, it just happened, and for a simple reason. Abba, as a musical act, have been around for so long and have had such a profound effect on the pop music landscape that any biography about them will automatically cover well-worn ground.

And, because it is entirely based on fact, one cannot relay what the book is about without spewing large chunks of text verbatim.

So, let’s take another tack and look at the works of Abba subjectively, from the point of view of the dude manning this keyboard right now.

Let’s rewind. I had just turned 11 when the Nineties landed on the face of the Earth like a bag of concrete.

Spool forward a little. When Nirvana released their breakthrough album Nevermind and Kurt Cobain was crowned the John Lennon of his generation, I was a couple months short of my 13th birthday.

My teenage years were spent watching and hearing the Nineties alternative rock revolution reshape the landscape of mainstream music and then watching alternative rock, in turn, get reshaped by the Corporate Music Monster.

Now, new research has shown the neural pathways that determine your taste in music more or less stop growing at the age of 14, so the music you liked by then is what you will like for the rest of your life.

All of this is to say I was extremely impressionable as the Nineties crested and Nineties alternative rock will forever be my musical bread and butter.

Not only because of my age, but because I was a young, white male, that most prevalent, yet most easily misunderstood, of demographics.

Alternative rock spoke my language. Zack de la Rocha angrily repeating the words “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” at the end of Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name, like a mantra for the disenfranchised youth, resonated profoundly with me.

I discovered the track Fucking Hostile by American heavy metal band Pantera at the age of 13, far too tender an age for a song so belligerent, yet its lyrics — which question the absolute authority granted specifically to parents, law enforcement and the clergy — stirred something in me that I didn’t know existed.

I was an angry young man alive at something of a turning point for angry young (mostly white) men in history.

As Chuck Palahniuk pointed out in his excellent novel Fight Club, we were men adrift from and disillusioned with the masculine influences of the generation before us. Generation X, they called us, and we were going to change the world.

We never did, sadly. The world did to us what it does to every groundswell movement — assimilates and monetises it.

We were supposed to undo all the bullshit that our parents inflicted on the world. Instead, we sat around in coffee shops designing album covers. C’est la vie, and so it goes on.

Why I mention all of this is, even as that angry, young, rhetoric-spewing man, I had a soft spot in my heart for Abba. One I would never tell anyone about, but it was there.

‘I could never let you go …’ – The Mail & Guardian (2)

My mother owned an Abba Greatest Hits cassette tape (remember cassettes?) which, for a long time, was the only music we would listen to in the car.

And over the course of many, many repeated listens during my late childhood, I came to acquire an appreciation of what Abba are all about.

And such is the profundity of their talent and skill that even my rebellious, angry young self was unable to shed the complete and utter love he had for the music of Abba.

It’s no surprise that a man who grew up to like rock and heavy metal would like Abba. Their best songs are almost always in a minor key but still delivered at an upbeat pace.

Their best lyrics are plaintive, mournful and longing, tugging at heartstrings while simultaneously making you want to dance until the pain fades.

Their musicianship is deceptively sharp, with their songwriters, guitarist Björn Ulvaeus and keyboardist Benny Andersson, consistently delivering masterclasses on how to write excellent songs that are still concise, in a common time signature and within a pop song “verse-chorus-verse” structure.

And man, not only were vocalists Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad gorgeous, but they could sing, brother! They delivered soaring melodies and haunting harmonies that are, without doubt, the focal point of Abba’s musical excellence.

And if any of the above sounds vaguely appealing or resonates with you in any way, then you could do a lot worse than pick up Smith’s book.

As with all biographies and autobiographies, if you aren’t interested in or don’t actively enjoy the subject matter, the book is going to fall flat.

But if you are interested in how four Swedish musicians could become the musical juggernaut which wrote songs that are more or less ubiquitous in modern mainstream music, then this is a great place to start.

The book is informative, well-written and, above all, entertaining. Just like Abba’s songs.

Despite their omnipresence, Abba are undergoing something of a renaissance at the moment, which is what sparked this book to begin with. And so, whether you are reliving old memories — like the old fart writing this piece — or learning for the first time about Abba and their outsize influence on pop music, give this book a read.

It will delight and enthral, amuse and inform. But, most of all, it will entertain.

And I don’t think Abba would have it any other way.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a hot date with Spotify’s curated Abba playlist.

My My! Abba Through The Ages is published by Simon and Schuster.

‘I could never let you go …’ – The Mail & Guardian (2024)

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