ABBA – “Dancing Queen”
In my teens I read a science fiction novel with a startlingly elegant twist. (I won’t mention the book’s name in case you come across it yourself.) It was about a brilliant scientist who vanishes: the book’s protagonist goes looking for clues to what happened, and becomes close to the scientist’s wife. And at a crucial juncture in the plot, the narration shifts, mid-paragraph, from third person to first: the scientist’s “vanishing” was literal, and with a thrill of horror you realise he’s been observing the action all along.
What on earth does this have to do with “Dancing Queen”? The song turns on a similar effect. Of all ABBA’s twenty or so hit singles this is the only one with no first-person content – none of the “I” or “me” or “us” that populate almost all their records. Of course on one level this is coincidence – but the apparent lack of personal perspective is very unusual for ABBA. They’re a band who like to ground their songs in experience and who pay close attention to a lyric’s perspective; even a character song like “Head Over Heels” makes sure to establish its subject’s relationship to the singer, right in the first line. “Dancing Queen” is entirely in the second-person – the song is directly addressed to a girl, but its narrator has, like the scientist in the novel, become invisible.
And yet there she is, all through the song, the prism for its observation – watching the dancing queen from the sidelines, vicariously feeling her freedom, her peak. What makes “Dancing Queen” a masterpiece is how it is both joy and the witnessing or memory of joy, and so much of this is down to the seamless, extraordinary shared lead vocal: Frida and Agnetha’s voices combining to strengthen the chorus as it arcs upwards, but also shifting to softer, fonder registers as they wistfully look on – “leave them burning and then you’re – gone…”.
The music, when she first heard it, made Frida cry – but to stress the sadness in “Dancing Queen” would be to do it a disservice. It’s not envious, or regretful, or bittersweet – it’s a more generous ache, the recognition that “having the time of your life” is literal, that this moment might be as good as it gets, but still being warmed by the moment’s incandescence. “Dancing Queen”, like “Teenage Kicks”, is one of those songs that captures the feeling that being young, dancing, loving is also to be living more intensely and wonderfully than anything else. But “Dancing Queen” goes further, tries to share that fire – “You can dance! You can jive!”, suddenly the “you” is, well, you. And him and her and me.
The vocals in “Dancing Queen” betray that this inclusiveness is, ultimately, doomed: the music does its best to deny that. Certainly its beat is democratic – you rarely see anyone dance well to “Dancing Queen”, which is a different thing from the cheap shot of its being ‘undanceable’. Everything in the arrangement is vibrant, exciting – the trilling intro, the sashaying keyboards in the “turn him on” verse – but of course it’s all in service to the magnificent piano part, its fusion of rock rhythm with light classical swagger, its top-end chords as pure a joy as anything pop’s given us.
That piano line turned up again three years later, changed slightly in a pop world that seemed overturned, and it almost pushed Elvis Costello – a perennial sideline-lurker who’d long seen the tears as well as the grins in ABBA - to Number One himself. Even by then “Dancing Queen” had become ABBA’s monolith, and by their 90s revival it was omnipresent. There’s an irony, maybe, that a song about the fleet intense beauty of youth, love and movement should have become such an ossified monument to ‘perfect pop’ – but when I play it that really never seems to matter.
10
Tom in FT /Popular • featured content/Pop • 8,104 views
Like many of the above (I suspect) I thought I knew this one like the back of my hand, but some of the earlier comments drove me to actually LISTEN to it, rather than just remembering having heard it.
It IS slower than I remember, even though I must have heard it a dozen times this year at least. I can’t get quite as enthusiastic as Tom about it, but it just brings a smile to my face every time I hear it; I honestly didn’t like it much at the time – Abba were definitely “uncool” (copyright 1977 Jo Callis), and by now were established enough that there was a bit of an anti-Abba backlash beginning.
There are one or two heavy hints in the vocal delivery that we’re not dealing with English speakers here, and while in some of their songs (e.g. The Day Before You Came) that can be a rather endearing little foible, here it just irritates. Once you’ve noticed it once, you’ll always notice it. (like the production error on Red Box’s “Lean on Me” – A favourite of yours I believe Tom – “The Circle and the Square” must surely be one of the greatest “Pop” albums of the 80s, or any decade?)
I also hadn’t noticed the Oliver’s Army bit, and will no doubt never get away from that either now.
My own take on it is not quite so romantic as some outlined above – just a couple of girls, going out on the town to have a good time teasing the boys, and probably not going any further because 1) they are only seventeen, and 2) this is Abba we’re talking about!
Not a 10, but a definite 7… or maybe an 8.
i was 17 in 1990 too and don’t remember ever not knowing DQ, and i think have pretty much always thought – as i still do now – that it was the greatest record ever made. as lots of people have said, it’s the joy and it’s the joy in seeing the joy, and it’s the sadness in seeing the joy and it’s the sadness in knowing the joy will become sadness, but for all of that, there’s no bitterness, the narrator is still there digging the dancing queen. and i can’t see how anyone is excluded – this is trancedence happening in some crappy suburban club – that plays rock music for gawds sake – the dancing queen isn’t some exotic creature gliding round studio 54.
bjorn again at reading was by a mile the highlight of the festival for me – i remember standing there with that stupid grin, lump in the throat and tears in the eyes that i wouldn’t experience again until i saw jonathan richman for the first time ten years later.
Re: 48 – In 1976 my big sister (who had the wild adolescence that I manifestly didn’t a decade or so later) was listening to things like Hawkwind and Roy Harper – a terrifying din to my three-year old self! ABBA was not the sort of thing that she’d give the time of day to. And as for my parents; my mother has never liked any popular music, while my father lost interest in pop once the skiffle boom was over!
in nine or so years, of course, we’ll be getting another wonderful, wonderful song where the dancing queen tells us what it’s like to be her.
I was at Reading 92(my first ever festival!) but didnt see Bjorn Again or indeed anybody on the Sunday they performed due to a classic piece of teen stupidity on me and my friends part. The bus back to Edinburgh was IIRC only 10 minutes after the end of the headliners set so we figured the ‘sensible’ thing to do(since the whole day was filled w/ bands we wanted to see on the main stage-Nirvana, Pavement..erm, cant remember the rest now) was to pack up first thing and head into the performance area early doors,taking our tent,ludicrously overpacked rucksacks(first ever festival remember.i know better now-bring a change of socks? Madness!) etc with us. Unfortunately we were turned away at the door due to our enormous luggage and so we merely wandered around feeling sorry for ourselves, catching vague snippets of sound on the wind for the next 7 hours..Not my proudest moment…
Hats off to everyone. This is a fabulous thread.
My memory of Dancing Queen on its release is that it was a mediocre disappointment to one and all. It seemed (intriguingly, after just two consecutive number ones) that Abba were already expected to produce instant pop classics to me, my parents, and my pop loving Gran. Can’t think of anyone with that weight of expectation previously, me being just too young to miss out on The Beatles.
The chart positions bear this out. In at 23, up to 16… in the olden days when you could work this kinda thing out with a slide rule it should’ve been no.10, possibly 9, the following week.
Instead, the UK suddenly cottoned on. From number 16 to number 1 inside seven days.
Take the ubiquity away and this may suggest, on top of everything else, Dancing Queen has great subtlety as well as real grandeur. No small feat for a song that is entirely made up of hooks – and so many – from start to finish. A solid 10.
And Abba had no real precedent. Unlike any other pre-76 million-selling act they were unknowable and, Agnetha’s bum aside, seemed character-free and charmless. No David Essex in their ranks, for sure. But at this juncture everyone (hip dudes aside) wondered what their next 45 would sound like. They still confuse me.
I recently took an Aussie friend to dinner. Almost simultaneously, we heard something in the background that made us look at each other rather archly. It was, of course, “Dancing Queen.” “Oh my God!” she said, dropping her fork on the plate, “It’s the Australian national anthem!”
Well, indeed.
As far as I’m concerned, Tom’s spot on with his critique. If this isn’t the perfect pop single, I don’t know what is.
May I, since he has been mentioned obliquely in this thread, put on the record how sad I am that Elvis Costello won’t be troubling the scorers here. Along with The Who, he is one of the two toweringly influential acts never to have had a number one and his influence on the very best of what is to come can’t be underestimated. He is also an accomplished craftsman, a superb writer of songs, and a consummate musician.
For what it’s worth!
I think you’re mixing up Elvis Costello with Billy Fury here.
EC was all right up until about Imperial Bedroom after which he became Julian Barnes for Q readers.
yet again i pimp the link to my oliver’s army review, where the problem of excellence of craft as a limitation is (at last somewhat) explored, and plus (a little) EC’s relationship to ABBA
disclaimer: comments thread gets boggeed down a bit in definitions of phrases like “considered art”, where i think i make things less rather than more clear as i try and explore what i was talkin abt
a boggee is a kind of friendly troll
More examination needed of Nick Lowe’s urgent and key involvement in OA and early EC in general, especially as OA seems to be a reflection/refraction/parallel personal-made-public sequel to NL’s “Little Hitler.”
On a deeper level I would have been much happier if one of the earlier more abrasive single – a Detectives, a Chelsea – had been EC’s “hit” (since in the wider Radio 2/Gold-friendly world he is essentially a one hit wonder in the Joe Brown sense, i.e. tons of hits IRL but this is the only one that People Remember).
On a baser level EC’s stupid pub rock twang voice is as big a barrier as it has ever been – his pronunciation of “work” and the “burg” of “Johannesburg” is precisely what has always put me off this record and recent EC work (i.e. last quarter century) in general.
Punctum,
I know it’s not quite the same, but “Watching the Detectives” did make No1 on the Luxy 208 chart, strange beast that it was (the chart, not the song)
There’s an entertaining piece by Nick Lowe in this month’s Word about making ‘Oliver’s Army’.
Yeah I broadly follow the “early funny stuff” line on EC too – in fact I’d draw the line earlier than Marcello, probably at or just after Get Happy! (though there are good tracks on everything up to King of America at least)
His voice becomes a problem for me when he starts using it more expressively – I think he fits the glossy Armed Forces production pretty well!
(I was a big fan of Costello in my mid-teens but have never really fully returned to him as an adult.)
Sadly I missed that since I boycotted the Fab 208 chart after they kept out “God Save The Queen” until they grudgingly put it in at number ten one week with much grumbling from the presenter. In the same week they had “Halfway Down The Stairs” by the Muppets at number one.
The Luxy chart was basically just Tony Prince’s “guess” at what next week’s BBC chart would be, with a slight bias towards their own playlist and, for some reason against certain songs (e.g. “Eye Level” never made the top 30, and neither of the Travolta/Olivia duets made no1). Perhaps they knew GSTQ wouldn’t be allowed to be an official no1. (More likely they just didn’t realise the importance of the single, being by now populated mainly by early middle-aged types.)
It was obviously not a particularly scientific way of compiling a chart, but gave us some no.1s we wouldn’t otherwise have had, for example in this year alone (among others) – “A Glass of Champagne”, both “Convoy”s, “S-S-S-Single Bed”, “Silver Star”, “My Resistance Is Low”, “Silly Love Songs”, “Young Hearts Run Free”, “Jeans On”, “In Zaire”, “Can’t Get By Without You”, “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”, and “Somebody To Love”. Some good, some bad, and an interesting diversion, I always thought.
To return to the point, “Dancing Queen” only got one week at No1 on the Luxy chart!
Has anyone actually put the Luxembourg chart stats online yet?
I remember from extreme youth in the very early seventies that back then 208 used to play the charts downwards, i.e. from 1 to 30. The bizarre chart topper that I remember at that time was “Song Of Joy” by Miguel Rios which only got to #13 or thereabouts on BMRB.
… and if I can correct an earlier error of mine – it was “Chelsea” which made No1 on Luxy, not “Detectives” – sorry!
In school at the time of “Detectives” it was all “eh, Marcello, that guy ye keep going on about who looks like you – he’s in the charts!”
(and indeed ’77 EC looked EXACTLY like 13-year-old MC – I was pretty keen on him at the time)
Marcello,
They are partly online. The guy who put them up doesn’t want the link published, to conserve bandwidth, but I’ll email it to you if we can do that through the site. I don’t know if it’s OK to post email addresses on here, so if it is, please do so and I’ll drop you a line. Alternatively I’m sure the site’s admin would forward an email from you to me – they will have my email address.
Openly publishing emails is fine by me – at the user’s own discretion – but spell them out (i.e freakytrigger at gmail dot com) or else the Spam Bunny will be paying you a regular visit.
Yes, that would be very much appreciated, VS, many thanks – it’s marcellocarlin at hotmail dot com.
I’ve just sent you a link by email Marcello.