“The Winner Takes It All” is pure theatre. In the sense that it’s a showstopper – Andersson and Ulvaeus had been getting itchy with the singles-albums routine and thinking towards the stage for a while, and this song by itself pretty much demanded that an ABBA musical come into being one day. But also in the sense that the song’s context is a performance – a final performance, with an audience of one – and the song is a sequence of desperate, doomed ploys by its singer to win over that audience, even as he’s flipping up his seat, putting on his coat and hat and walking out of the show forever.
This isn’t to say “Winner” is at all phoney – these ploys aren’t really trying to mask the singer’s underlying emotion, which is anguish. But there are plenty of songs about anguish: this is a song about attempts to use it, or spin it. The song, like “Maggie May” or “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”, takes place in real time; a monologue. The attempts fail – but gloriously.
The first ploy is negotiation – don’t worry; I’m not here to rake over old embers, we’re reasonable people, we both tried our best. The music is gentle, reassuring – the falling piano melody that dominates the song is stately. The chorus, restrained on its first appearance, has a philosophical air.
And then the tone changes, the song becomes a guilt trip. Since we’re reasonable people, how could you let me believe these things? “Building me a home / Thinking I belonged there” – that slightly elongated, stressed “me” is the first hint of steel in Agnetha’s performance. The music has stepped up its pace, the pianos more urgent. There’s more venom in the singing as the song’s trap is sprung: if only fools play by the rules, and life is a dice throw – this metaphysical turn the song’s only lyrical mis-step – then the outcome of the reasonable game is still in doubt. The chorus, second time round, is more strident, more desperate.
The third ploy – a frontal attack. “But tell me, does she kiss, like I used to kiss you?” Agnetha has never sounded sexier, all caressed sibilants and soft vowels, then the regal sweep of “deep inside”. Rules must be obeyed, she shrugs, and the message is – throw the game! But the moment passes: resignation returns, and there’s real bitterness in “a lover – or a friend?”.
Which leaves just abjection, the real last throw of those dice: the music subsides, and for the first time the singer sounds broken, hesitant, perhaps horrified by how the conversation is turning out. “Seeing me so tense – no self-con…fidence”: it’s pitiful. And in the end, with a flick of the voice – that conspiratorial “but you see” – her pride returns, and the ranging final chorus is a defiant self-justification of what she’s just put her audience (him, and us) through.
On the video, the members of ABBA laugh and clink glasses, reminding us that there’s a third layer of theatre here, the public disintegration of a real life marriage. That layer’s become shorthand for the whole song – “Winner” as a divorce epic. But the specifics are unfair on the song: as “Dancing Queen” was to their world-beating peak, “Winner” is to the wintry late ABBA – a monumental combination of supreme craft and bittersweet subtlety. And more – it’s one of pop’s great pieces of acting.
Score: 10
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That last phrase is a subject that always interests me – you may recall that I talked about acting a lyric rather than simply feeling it in that old Al Green piece, but it’s a major part of my love for some other acts, such as the Shangri-Las or Dolly Parton. I think it’s an underappreciated skill, often lost in favour of vocal pyrotechnics (I often like these too, but there is sometimes a trade-off).
I know they’d written “adult” songs before (Knowing Me, Knowing You) but this one wasn’t as dressed up in bright pop clothes so it was a surprise at the time that ABBA could be this grown up, to me anyway. It felt like their ‘Send In The Clowns’ or ‘Rumours’
I think this is their last truly great single, I might quibble with a 10 but only a little.
I’d say “The Day Before You Came” is great. And maybe “The Visitors”. But this is better than either of those (I think it’s their best single full stop).
It’s another goodbye-to-the-70s single in a way – one of the titans of the era preparing to throw in the towel: more on that when we hit their actual last No.1 maybe.
This is an outstanding song, with a fantasticly judged performance by singers and musicians preventing it from becoming overblown or mawkish. Unlike ‘Crying’ this benefits from restraint rather than full on operatic emoting – although I can imagine it being howled through quite affectingly at karaoke evenings.
I love the way that the lyric moves from the personal to the cosmic. It may have been inspired by Cole Porter’s ‘Every time we say goodbye’ in the way that it invokes the indifference of the gods – although I envisage Odin and Loki in Abba’s case rather than Zeus and Hermes.
I really didn’t appreciate this fully at the time but this deserves a 10 without a doubt.
couldn’t agree more with the 10 rating. my parents loved abba when i was young and i really couldn’t understand it. flash forward 15 years to a tape my cousin made for me of her 25 favorite songs of all time. when this popped up, i was completely taken aback. this was not platform boots and snowsuits, this had real depth of feeling. it made me reevaluate everything i thought i knew about abba. i was in love. this is always the track i play for abba-haters. if the song doesn’t affect you, there’s sometime wrong with you. how could you deny THIS?
for me, the backing vocals make the song. notice they only come in during the most intense sections of the song. when the singer becomes overwhelmed by emotion, the backing vocal becomes the rational counterpart. having said that, their sound and melody are perhaps a knock-off of lennon’s “happy xmas(war is over)”.
this is abba’s masterpiece. while it vies with “SOS”, “One of Us”, and “Under Attack” for favorite status, I’m well aware of its superiority.
Indeed, a masterpiece. To my mind this is one of only two Number Ones in my lifetime fully deserving the whole 10.
As Tom rightly points out this is one of THE great vocal performances. At times you feel as if you’re intruding on private grief. Which I suppose, given the state of the Abba marriages at the time, we were.
Abba return to the top slot after a gap of two and a half years and their genius has not dimmed. “The Winner Takes It All” is a heart rendering concession of defeat in the game of love (“Nothing more to say. No more ace to play”) and we sit spellbound sharing her misery. But is this self-wallowing pity? It is not. The brilliance of this record is that there is never a swipe at the victorious rival or even at the lover she has lost. Instead there is a brave stoicism which we readily applaud as the narrator loses everything (“The Winner Takes it All, The loser standing small. Beside the victory, That’s her destiny”). There is, of course, reflection (“I was in your arms, thinking I belonged there”) before acceptance (“It’s simple and it’s plain. Why should I complain?”) and even though she offers a final brave challenge (“But tell me does she kiss, like I used to kiss you, Does it feel the same, when she calls your name?”) she knows her cause is lost and there is a handshake before the song ends with her howling into the night “The Winner Takes It All” and a magnificent piece of theatre leaves us with a feeling far greater than a woman being dumped by a lover with whom she is especially in love. This is not the end of a relationship. This is the end of the world.
You lot are all raving about this but sorry, no. Abba were never for me then and not now. Im not going to say their crap, that would be ignorant. Just to say that Abba are not on my taste list. I guess there will come a time when kids will look back to the stuff I like and slag it all off. I’m not going to do that here to Abba because you guys are clever and reasonable and I don’t want to look like a dickhead. I just think Abba belong in the seventies not in the eighties which is my decade really.
Just to say, briefly, that the moment when the swell of music stills for a second and Agnetha gets down to the nitty gritty with that “does she kiss like I used to kiss you?” is the single most arresting and brilliant moment in all of Abba’s work.
I think I’m closer to Marshmallow Hamilton’s interpretation of the last verse than Tom’s, the ‘but you see’ doesn’t show me a glorious flash of pride as much as a simple victory through loss – the twist is that there is no twist, that this isn’t turning into I Will Survive any time soon, the flash of a match and the realisation that that odd smell is petrol, and despite yourself you’re too close to get away now…
Okay, I suppose that is a twist.
There is something rather poignant about this being John McCain’s favorite song. I guess it’s appropriate.
Also also she singing it into truth, do you see, that the winner this time will take it all, the misery as well as the good times, as she has no more space for it..
This is why I don’t review things, I will nail any half-clever idea at all to a song.
Standing at No.34 this same week: “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division
Just thought that should be noted.
Wait, I heard that John McCain’s favorite song was “Dancing Queen.” Which I guess is inappropriate.
This is now visually embedded in my mind as Claremont Road, Hendon FC’s former ground, as they would play this at the end of a home defeat while I trudged out to catch the 102 home (the bar was the winners’ enclosure).
I’ll go with Martin’s comparison to the Shangri La’s rather than a musical number – ‘Girl Group grown up’ is a rare sub genre, and this as good as it gets.
Best moment: “But tell me, does she kiss…” followed by a perfectly timed drop to near silence (cue awkward shuffling, pangs of guilt, remorse).
For quite a while now I’ve had a sinking feeling about an oncoming tsunami of mark inflation as we enter the period of the majority of Populistas. Part of this is resentment of the (perceived, hasn’t actually happened at least not yet) triumph of the 80s over the 60s (when it was new ground being broken), of production over performance. And, of course, that our first double-10 act should be Abba and not the Beatles! (Although had Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane hit the top spot it might have been a different story, might it not, Tom?)
Anyway, all that resentment should be unworthy of me. I’m 54 after all, and supposed to be grown up (although I’ve never seen any sign of that happening.) And I really can’t fault this one. It’s a quite masterful performance, which would have graced any period – I can certainly imagine this going down very well indeed in the 50s.
And I can’t have it both ways. I had a sinking feeling that Abba, whom I can’t remember ever not holding in high regard, were going to get a shellacking from the Populistas. I’m delighted that it hasn’t happened.
Semper sursum, as we say around these parts. (I had intended to attend last night’s FA Cup replay between Barrow and Eastbourne Borough as Waldo’s proxy, but a nasty cold has prevented me.)
Should-have-seen-this-coming-ages-ago watch: I noticed a copy of ABBA Singstar for the Playstation in HMV yesterday. Man that’s got to be one hard game (as anyone who’s tried doing ABBA at karaoke will testify), unless you can tweak it to put everything down half an octave?
I am struggling manfully against mark inflation Rosie! And while the 80s is certainly “my decade” it’s got its share or horrors as well as triumphs.
Everyone is right about the poigniancy and depth of this. The thing which I always find difficult to imagine is first of all, handing this wife to your estranged wife to sing, and then travelling around the world to perform it in stadiums together night after night!
A word for its placing in ABBA’s 1980 album. Its the second song, coming after the title track (which we’ll go on to discuss, a song about being in a hugely successful pop group) and then crashes into ‘On & On & On’ – a song, in part about going out and pulling, but with a slightly nightmarish quality of routine and repetition in the chorus. That great album really does have some narrative structure to it…
Sod how deep this is – it’s just a big, ace tune. But that sleeve: a little too casual for the grooves within.
#2 Watch: Two weeks of Diana Ross’ cartwheeling, Chic-orchestrated ‘Upside Down’, which would have been a great number one, too.
#19 – Yes, there’s a hall of mirrors effect at work here. Benny is splitting with Frida, Bjorn with Agnetha. Benny and Bjorn write a song about the end of a relationship, from the “losing” woman’s point of view, and then they hand it to Agnetha to sing. That’s borderline emotional cruelty, isn’t it? No wonder she gives the performance of her lifetime – but who is articulating what emotion, and for what reason?
We can only guess, but it was interesting to read Bjorn’s denial (in a recent Observer Music Monthly) that this song was in anyway a reflection of the band members’ emotional reality:
‘Well, with “The Winner Takes It All”, the basis is the experience of a divorce, but it’s fiction. ‘Cause one thing I can say is that there wasn’t a winner or a loser in our case. That’s fiction. A lot of people think it’s straight out of reality, but it’s not.’
Hmmph. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?
Interesting to read Peter at #8 saying that “Abba belong in the seventies not in the eighties”. Plenty agreed with him at the time, as their falling record sales in 1981 and 1982 showed, and certainly the spangly “Mamma Mia” version of Abba had no place in the early-to-mid 1980s… but in my mind, “The Winner Takes It All” forms the glorious overture to the groups’s second incarnation: Bleak, Wintry, Bergman-esque, All-Grown-Up, Sadder And Wiser, Post-Divorce Abba.
And maybe in some ways, Abba Mark II works so well artistically because the old Abba had no place in the Eighties. There’s a sceptral quality to some of these later songs (I’m not clever enough to use voguish terms like “hauntology”), as if we are listening to the ghosts of the 1970s, hanging around after the party is over.
(Case in point: the aforementioned “On And On And On”, whose underlying bleakness and alienation pokes awkwardly through the forced surface jollity. It’s a midweek Divorced And Separated/Twenty-Fives And Over Nite at the town centre disco, where everyone’s a little over-done, a little desperate, trying a bit too hard.)
At the time, the 18-year old version of me had no use for “The Winner Takes It All”. This wasn’t I wanted from pop at all, and so I zoned out on it with typical generational lack of empathy. 28 years later, I think it’s up there with their best material.
The key text in any reading of an ABBA of the 1970s/ ABBA of the 1980s dichotomy, must be ‘Happy New Year’, set on the 1st of January, 1980.
“Seems to me now
That the dreams we had before
Are all dead, nothing more
Than confetti on the floor
Its the end of a decade
In another ten years time
Who can say what well find
What lies waiting down the line
In the end of eighty-nine…”
Its sad, but what hope there is in it lies in the ability to carry on, and that the couple are still together.
#4 yes on the way the song suddenly opens out to reveal that the situtation is cosmically hopeless, it’s kind of a paraphrase of king lear’s “as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods”.
but the line i love best is “rules must be obeyed”. nothing better sums up the grown up, matter of fact, northern european, un-rock n roll glory of abba.
in a mid-eighties smash hits yearbook (85 i think) there’s a feature where the stars list their favourite ever records. this is one of phil oakey’s and ever since i’ve not been able to hear this without thinking of his comment “so sad, so true”. it was a bit of a disapointment when i recovered the yearbook from my parents’ house recently and found he’s actually said something prosaic like “i like a nice sad song”
yes i second mike in ref. my callow indifference at the time — i was pro forma pro-abba in sympathy with a spiky pro-poptimist at my school (who i. set himself bold nd alone against the endless sea of poshboy prog, and ii. was dating a 35-yr-old woman aged 15 himself) (i’ve told this story before i think) but not to the extent of checking them, more like thinking “good for them” and carrying on ignoring them
lee’s is a good catch as comparison: i too was enough of a secret romantic nihilist to believe (back then) that curtis’s story was closer to some important overlooked truth than anything as compromised and negotiated and plain grown-up as this in-group scando-backstory (also, to be fair to teen me, the grimness in my own family’s domestic set-up was seriousness illness of a parent and how this was faced, not any kind of marital war)
now mainly (in my way more pragmatic middle age) what i get from joy div — that song anyway, which i have NEVER much liked — is misery and confusion and youth snuffed out needlessly: the abba approach seems, well, smarter and braver
(also — this only just occurred to me — i was very excited at age 20 at the way the likes of pere ubu were bringing a broader range of metaphors for life and love into play, specifically political metaphors; but actually this works both ways, doesn’t it? agnethe is unfolding the story of what happens to ANY adult allegiance, ANY engaged commitment, when it turns out not perfectly hermetic and two-way after all: how do you behave when the party grows away from you? dignity? tantrums? etc etc)
It is indeed hard to, er, divorce what was going on in Bjorn and Agnetha’s life from the narrative of the song, even if the circumstances might have been different. It’s like literary criticism that seeks to ignore anything you might know about the history or circumstances of the author when discussing the text (some lit-crit experts might be able to tell me the term for that).
That last verse (“you’ve come to shake my hand”) seems not so much pride or stoicism but the confirmation of the crushing nature of the defeat – he wants to part on good terms but she’s not having any of it because of what’s happened to her. (Marshmallow, it doesn’t seem to me like there is a handshake.) He’s relatively unaffected; she’s passive-aggressive with knobs on and perhaps justifiably so.
And if you felt the way I did about Agnetha, you’d be going, Bjorn, you clot, you’ve pulled way out of your league with her and now you’re dumping her…? It gets even more poignant when you consider her subsequent life.
Billy #23, nice thought about the end-of-decade tone of sadness. Your quoting of the “Happy New Year” lyric brought strongly to mind another bloke who at this stage of 1980 – indeed this very month – is returning to the fray with the message, as he put it himself, “How’s your relationship going?… Weren’t the 70s a drag? … let’s try and make the 80s good…” It’s not the first time I’ve alluded to his story this year, and we’ll come back to him very shortly.
I like Abba (I did at the time too), and I like this song, although I’m a little surprised at the gushing praise for it here. Personally, I’m willing to take at face value Bjorn’s claim that the song is fiction. Especially when he talks in that same article about songwriting as if it were a nine-to-five job. There seems to be a real investment around these parts in seeing lyrics as some kind of unvarnished autobiographical truth, that’s quite a romantic way of perceiving things I think. I think Tom is right to talk about theatre and acting in this regard.
#26 – And then there was Yazoo’s “Goodbye Seventies” (from, er, 1983):
“I’m glad that we don’t hear you any more, I’m tired of playing in your fashion war.”
Yes, thank goodness we left the style-obsessed 1970s behind, eh?
Our lodger, in about 1987 or so, had a double cassette compilation called something like SEVENTIES: THE DECADE THAT TASTE FORGOT. I remembered thinking that yes, the aesthetic problems of our time had probably been solved and what on earth would nostalgists of the 80s find to talk about.
It’s good to see one or two posters above questioning the recent critical re-assessment of Abba. I have always firmly believed that re-assessment itself to be firmly tongue-in-cheek.
Abba were a good pop band. It’s not their fault they weren’t English speakers, so their vocals can often sound stilted, disconnected, or almost androgynous. This is an accident of birth, not a ground-breaking innovation.
Their lyrics were often good, but often rather bad as well (“Money Money Money”, “Gimme Gimme Gimme”) and I do think there has been more retro-fitting of this band’s story than any other, possibly in an attempt to portray them as some sort of geniuses. I don’t know why that should be; why they can’t be appreciated for what they were – a damn fine pop band, but nothing more?
This is certainly one of their better singles, but I’m inclined to view the lyrics as a cynical (but successful)attempt to cash in, by letting listeners think this was what it was like to be Agnetha at that time. I somehow doubt Agnetha would have gone along with it if it had all been rather closer to the truth.
…..lights blue touchpaper and stands WELL back…..
I think the retro-fitting – which hopefully I’ve contributed to in my own small way
– is because the band NEEDED more retro-appreciation than most. They had a lot of factors going against them which tend* to lead to critical neglect: immense mainstream popularity; loved by women, and sentimentally loved by women at that; cross-generational appeal; European; a clothes sense that left something to be desired…
So to dig through this to get at what’s good about them required a bit of effort. In my reviews I’ve tried to pick apart why I think the craft of ABBA – the mix of performance, lyric, and music – is so effective.
There are substantial criticisms to be made of ABBA – their attempts at funkiness and dance music are often risible; their jokes were usually bad; they could often be trite; they weren’t (as Rosie says) particularly groundbreaking (their stoical grown-upness is a rarity in white pop but it had a mirror in adult 70s soul). But every band has flaws.
Maybe it’s just that most posters here think the gap between “a damn fine pop band” and “geniuses” isn’t especially large
*or tended – I’ll grant you the goalposts have moved in the last ten years or so, to the point where anti-ABBA opinion can now pose as unfashionably clear thinking!
I think the lyrics here are perfectly serviceable, but nothing more. There’s nothing particularly unexpected for the “break-up song” genre. And there are some clunkers in there: the gods may throw the dice, their minds as cold as ice, indeed. And some downright nonsense (the likes of me abide spectators of the show, say what?). I don’t think the lyrics can compare to those of the other charting break-up song referred to upthread.
The judges will decide
The likes of me abide
Spectators of the show
Always staying low
These are clumsy lyrics but not nonsensical – she’s saying her lack of agency as the loser reduces her to the role of spectator. (She needs a romantic John Sergeant figure obv.) It’s a bit unfair to quote the middle two lines though – it’d be like saying “All my failings take hold get a taste in my mouth, HEIN??”
Re: #25
I did note ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ because the songs are both wintry-cold dissections of failed relationships but in retrospect Curtis’ lyrics (good though they are) do seem a bit affected, a young man with pretensions trying to be profound and poetic about love while ABBA’s relatively more straightforward lyrics seem to carry more realistic weight.
I think I was primed to like this one because my mother was always a big fan of grown-up relationship songs, particularly ones about divorce and adultery (from personal experience) so the air of my youth was thick with the likes of “Me and Mrs. Jones” and “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” and as a result I’ve always liked songs that have the same adult and complex perspective as a novel or a movie.
as a matter of interest — i could google this but i’ll ask instead — did abba always also record their songs in swedish?
the reassessment issue is complicated by the fact that a generation’s re-visits to its past probably more or less coincide with any given member of that generation desire to look back and see where s/he was right and where wrong in past judgments and allegiances — was i a visionary popcult winner then, or just a sheep? which am i being now? is my ardent desire never to be seen as a sheep ever ever muffling my actual feelings (then or now); or obscuring my judgments?
(the advantage of the lyrics not being first-rate is that it foregrounds the non-lyric elements of the music, of course — which with abba were often strong enough easily to overshadow the clumsier attempts at expressing a subtle idea)
Oh I agree that bland lyrics will never sink a good song, they don’t have that much power. Only truly unavoidably awful lyrics can do that.
Talking of lyrics, I was interested to note on the WTIL wikipedia page that the song was reprised by Mireille Mathieu as “Bravo, tu as gagné” (having just looked at it on youtube, it’s exactly the same arrangement). Around the same time someone did a French version of the Sheena Easton hit “9 to 5”, translated (if translated is the word) as “L’amour c’est comme une cigarette”. But this must be about the last time they did that in France, translate a hit for the domestic market.
Someone more au fait with the French charts could possibly update this – but I do remember (in fact still have it on tape) Sylvie Vartan’s “Danse ta vie” which was the French version of “What A Feeling” from “Flashdance” – so that takes the practice into 1983 at least.
“The gods may throw the dice, their minds as cold as ice” is a splendiferous lyric about fate and human vulnerability. It’s like a pop Sophocles.
Am I the only person for whom ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ reminds them of ‘Pinball Wizard’?
#39 TBH it always makes me think of D&D but that is my trauma not ABBA’s
Ooops, late to the debate, and this was one I was really excited about commenting on…
Despite a suitably self-conscious awareness of and drift towards the new romantic synth pop fashion, I hadn’t left my devotion to Abba behind. And I was a proper card carrying devotee (no, it really wasn’t a fashionable thing to me), even, as I recall, subscribing to the magazine, an A5 pamphlet of dubious quality or content. All of which explains to a great degree my failure to engage with the Jam/Dexys school of recent #1s.
So obviously I liked this. And I think it stands up fantastically today, despite the familiarity, the endless revivals, the musicals, Meryl and the utterly bizarre Kylie/Danii cover of the other week.
All the 10s are justified because this is one of those very rare meta-pop records, that manages to do and signify to a quite remarkable intensity.
Firstly it is simply, on its own merits and with no external factors weighing in, as stark and plain a break up song as ever hit the charts. The slight second language clunkiness of the metaphor heightens, rather than dissipates the meaning, and as many have already said, Agnetha’s performance, carrying, in defeat, no histrionics is remarkable.
Second is the interplay with the real life band/marriage scenario – and I’m firmly in the school of the song (and video) as one of the most extreme pieces of pop cruelty ever perpetrated. I think Agnetha’s contemporaneous quotes about the break up – Bjorn having moved in with her replacement the same week – rather back this up. And her subsequent personal and emotional history, or at least the tabloid version thereof, pile on yet more significance.
Finally for me is the notice that as a song it crystalised the changing emotional and critical trajectory of the band, while at the same time managing to stand completely out of the artist context in the musical/film/whatever afterlife, accumulating more and more emotional punch as it goes along.
Not many on the list that one say that for….
I’ll give you “the gods may throw the dice”, but “their minds as cold as ice” – come on it’s doggerel, it’s just there to rhyme!
the critical reevaluation of abba strikes me as somewhat unexpected, though ultimately logical. initially disdained by the “hipper” elements of the pop audience of the time, admired ironically by the end of the 80s, and finally honestly adored in the current day.
there is something intangible about abba, an x-factor that explains their unexpected triumph. personally speaking, my two favorite bands of all time are probably the beatles and the kinks – always have been, always will be. i LIKE them both very very very much. having said that, abba would probably not make my top top but i LOVE abba. i love them on a level i could never love the beatles – perhaps because i’m so familiar with the beatles, perhaps because of the sheer emotional force of abba’s music. i don’t believe i’m alone in my response to that music.
what is it about abba that invited sceptical brits and americans to give them a chance initially? what is it that continues to convert doubters and win new fans across the world? i agree with #22 about the spectral (or sceptral) quality of the music, but i don’t think it can be limited to their 80s output. even “dancing queen” and “knowing me knowing you” sound otherworldly in their own way. i also agree with #30 that no aspect of ABBA was planned, it is surely almost entirely a happy accident. but accident or no, there is something *else* there that i’ve never quite been able to pinpoint.
The gods dictate mortals’ destiny through controlling fate, acting with no compassion or empathy for the pain that their actions have on human beings.
Hence the gods’ minds are as cold as ice, both dispassionatly objective and yet causing excruciating anguish and discomfort for mortals.
Gold star to Bjorn and Benny for conveying all of this in twelve words which also rhyme and scan.
Re. #38: The practice continued in Germany until early 1984 at least. Mike Oldfield’s “Moonlight Shadow” was a hit for Juliane Werding as “Die Nacht Voll Schatten”, and there was a German language cover of “Relax” called “Relax (Komm Tu Es)” which rather inverted the original sentiment!
Oddly, I also remember both “L’Amour, C’est Comme Une Cigarette” and Sylvie Vartan’s take on “Flashdance (What A Feeling)”.
see this is the song’s secret text — > “as flies to wanton boys are we chart popsters to the SO-CALLED HIPSTER SO-CALLED CRITICS”
as i recall — as someone desperate myself to grow up to become part of same* — the UK rockwrite establishment (late 70s, early 80s division) were pretty much unitedly pro-Abba at this date (even if they were divided about everything else)
*readers, i married it
There’s an issue of the NME, February 1981 IIRC, the first ever U2 cover, where two disparate articles are linked together ‘ABBA Vs. Crass’!
the UK rockwrite establishment (late 70s, early 80s division) were pretty much unitedly pro-Abba
hasn’t there always been a bit of a tendency for abba to be the rockpress’s black friends? see also “i’ve nothing against manufactured pop music, the monkees did some great stuff”*. in my day it was the nme putting kylie on the cover and using the entire two page story to congratulate themselves for putting kylie on the cover.
*most recently deployed by mark knopfler on “from the bottom to the top”, he then got his brace with “of course, there’s a line straight back from [“the message”] to the blues”
well, you missed off the last part of what i said, pink c: the point i was making was that, when it came to abba (if i’m remembering correctly) all factions agreed; so yes, the faction that was down with manufactured pop agreed with the faction that was perhaps somewhat uncomfy or touristy in its pop love… which faction is the more representative of the rock press of the time i am way too parti pris to say