Just look riiiiiiight in the mirror…..

Apologies for the delay, by the way: it’s been caused by work, toddler-related lack of sleep, the Poptimists Top 50 of 2008 taking up my available faff time, and the next track being quite hard to write about.

Still some distance short of halfway through the list of number ones though, since the average tenure at number one has been somewhat shorter for the past 15 years or so.

I think this is a far stronger single than “Angel eyes” and “Chiquitita”

i think this is the first song i consciously remember being A Number One and to six year old me the SOO-PAH-PAH TRUE-PAH-PAH bits were clearly top fun, to be sung around house and playground at any given opportunity (and also with hilarious word changes it could be made to sound a bit rude). also i kind of always knew what the title of the song referred to as they appeared on swap shop and the question to win a pile of abba goodies was “what is a super trouper?”

I presume I must have done, as I am aware of the b-side, which was perfectly pleasant, but which would not have had me running out to buy it.

I think someone touched on it earlier. This is paint-by numbers Abba; formulaic with motifs from a number of their earlier songs; despite what one or two posters have suggested, they’re taking no risks here, just doing what they do with their eyes shut and their swag-bags open.

There is a story that the album was all but ready and already titled before this song was even written. One more track was needed so they dashed this one off double-quick, and lo and behold, another monster from the Swedish geniuses.

I take both the story and the “Swedish geniuses” bit with a rather large pinch of salt. (Although “The Day Before You Came” was a work of art, both their original, and Blancmange’s sublime cover)

Pamela Stephenson did a very good Kate Bush, I remember those parodies far more than I do the ABBA one.

Oh, and Ian Hunter also wrote two of the best rock band autobiography songs too: “Saturday Gigs” and “The Ballad of Mott”

More recently there have been a wealth of songs giving the latest bulletin on what it’s like to be J-Lo, Fiddy, Robbie or whoever, and as often as not they’re a pain. Then you come to Britney’s “Piece of Me” and OH SHUT UP I DON’T BLOODY WANT TO KNOW…

Ian Hunter did write a fine book, Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, that tells you a lot about this too.

It also, more than other moment up to this point, had the effect of ensuring as 1981 dawned that my ears were open to New Pop. I was first and foremost a pop music fan and a chart follower, a Smash Hits and NME reader.

My least favourite subjects at school suffered for lack of attention. Even my love of football suffered…

I have always felt a tinge of sadness at not being old enough to have gone to the Blitz, and been part of the London nightlife at the height of New Romanticism. It all seemed so incredibly exotic and glamourous to a 14 year old stuck miles away from the bright lights on the South Coast of England.

The bunny reminds me that we shall be presented with further opportunities to discuss the hilarious comedy of Hale & Pace in the fullness of time.

Is this the first time that we have parodies of songs going on simultaneously with their actual chart runs (Something which ‘Radio Active’ and ‘Spitting Image’ will carry on throughout the 1980s. Thank you, Phil Pope…)

(Incidentally, Taylor wrote a brilliant essay about ‘The Visitors’ in a free Melody Maker book, ‘Unknown Pleasures’ 13 years ago)

Such a shame we won’t get to comment on One Of Us, another song that meant little lyrically to me at the time (“I saw myself as a concealed attraction, I felt you kept me away from the heat and the action” – christ! Too good) but, like The Winner Takes It All, only hit hard when I reached my 30s. Surely they’re the most adult POP group of all – pardon me if someone brought this up years back.

“Su-pa-pa tru-pa-pa” bv’s, though, are one of the most obvious sticks with which to beat Abba, considerably worse than Deb’s mugging on the Tide Is High’s fade. Had a pub chat with a h8r last night who thinks Does Your Mother Know is their best 45. There’s a first.