ABBA REVIVAL - Jim Colyer

ABBA from Sweden are the real kings and queens of rock & roll. The music of the 1970s became the music of the 1990s, and the ABBA revival was the tip of the spear. ABBA Gold went double platinum in The United States. More ABBA Gold and the box set, Thank You For The Music, sold as well. Classics like Dancing Queen, Take A Chance On Me, and Waterloo again rode the airwaves. ABBA books were published. VH1 featured ABBA The Movie from 1977 as well as a tribute on their 8-Track Flashback. ABBA sold 250 million records between 1972 and 1982. Nearly every country in the world bought ABBA. Only China, North Korea and Vietnam resisted. ABBA had 9 number one songs in England. Fernando to this day is the biggest selling record in the history of Australia's music business. The group toured The United States in 1979 and Japan in 1980. There was a distribution of labor in ABBA. Each member had his or her niche. Each brought something to the group that the others could not. Agnetha was the blonde who sang high. Frida was the brunette who sang low. Benny was the pianist who composed the music. Bjorn was the rhythm guitarist with a knack for lyrics. On stage, the ladies were beautiful bookends. ABBA's music is great because of the way it combines rock & roll with classical. The lyrics are autobiographical from the female point of view. They reflect the lives of Agnetha and Frida even though they were written by Bjorn. Pop music went to the city in the 1970s, and ABBA songs are the city incarnate. They typify the young, urban female working office jobs and looking for love. ABBA continued the depolarization of the sexes which began with Elvis Presley. Although Elvis was in the Army and served his country well, he was not General MacArthur. If Elvis was a teddy bear, The Beatles were four teddy bears. The Beatles showed that men could be sensitive to issues and even grow long hair. ABBA let the women have the spotlight, a fitting gesture since the 1970s was the decade of women's liberation. ABBA took rock & roll to the European continent and performed it in five languages as disco became the music of the women's decade. ABBA started disco. ABBA recorded about 110 songs in English in 10 years. Their music is art. It has literary, poetic, dramatic and artistic qualities that exist nowhere else in pop music. Each song is like a little play or a painting hanging in a gallery. ABBA pioneered the use of rock video, and their clips were finally made available in compilations. Their work appeals to all ages. The ABBA solo period of the 1980s saw Agnetha produce 3 albums beyond the group. Frida had 2. Benny and Bjorn entered the theatre with the Chess musical and finally, in the 1990s, their musical about Swedish emigrants. As ABBA followed Elvis and The Beatles, their legacy can be seen in the subsequent work of Shania Twain and Mutt Lange. ABBA has been eligible for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame since 1999. ----Jim Colyer
Contact: jim@jimcolyer.com