ABBA - Super Trouper
#437
November 3 1980
ABBA
Super Trouper
Genre: Pop
4 out of 5
Highlights:
Winner Takes it All
Me and I
Lay All Your Love On Me
I never really got into ABBA. Like everyone on the planet I’ve heard their hits enough time to think that I’ve really heard the band. Those songs are/were ubiquitous. And I even have a Greatest Hits album somewhere although I think it might be my wife’s. I forget. That’s a result of the Tyranny of Time. And the blending of our lives.
And that’s what ABBA is all about, yes? Blending of lives and the coming apart of those lives? All of it swirling amidst the happiest of 4 on the floor rhythms that pulsate in a way determined to make you…dance. And when you dance it’s a form of courtship. Dancing leads to coupling and coupling leads to…uncoupling, way too often.
I mean, all relationships end, right? Even the ones that “last forever”. When you die or the partner dies, so does the relationship.
ABBA writes songs that sound so damned happy and, so often, they are tinged with regret, filled with remorse, even vengeful. (I’m looking at you, “Winner Takes it All”)
Surely they aren’t all about this but there’s enough there to make me think about the incongruity of the countervailing dynamics of words and music. For example, “On and On and On” is a pretty dark piece, nearly nihilistic, certainly libertine, but dammit, that music has me tapping my toes.
The second side is a bit more tepid and wistful. That isn’t to say that the songs are bad, they are just…boring. Until the masterpiece of production, “Lay All Your Love on Me”, on which you can feel the influence on dozens of bands in the future, most notably, Scissor Sisters, Mika and Daft Punk.
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