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Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba
Abba became a vehicle for a kind of wholesome perversity, a nonconformist conformism: two picture-perfect couples...
The band became a vehicle for a kind of wholesome perversity, a nonconformist conformism: two picture-perfect couples shattered by divorce; four unimpeachable heterosexuals beloved by multiple generations of gay disco dancers; a gender-balanced quartet where the men put words in the women’s mouths. Alongside the rococo fizz of their wedding playlist hits, Abba were masters of kitchen-sink realism – the diaristic ‘The Day before You Came’, the post-divorce tremors of ‘The Winner Takes It All’ – but could also dish out drippy platitudes without embarrassment: ‘Happy New Year’, ‘Thank You for the Music’, ‘The Way Old Friends Do’, ‘I Have a Dream’. Pulsing with Cold War paranoia, the synth-driven title track imagines a fateful knock at the door: ‘They must know by now I’m in here trembling/In a terror ever growing.’ ‘The Day before You Came’ points towards the oncoming decade of melancholy electronic pop forged by Abba’s descendants, with Benny’s Yamaha GX-1 synth edited by Tretow to sound as regimented as a drum machine.
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