July 8, 2018 Comments Off on ABBA – the unranked singles Views: 2154 Music, Nostalgia

Got a minute for ABBA nostalgia?

Even if you don’t, the chances are you will stumble upon the new comedy musical release, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again in theaters this summer.

Music critics have already used the occasion to revisit ABBA material. For instance, Priya Elna, Michael Hann, Tim Jonze, John Harris, Peter Robinson, Alex Needham, Dave Simpson and Laura Snapes have ranked the Swedish band’s UK singles in a top 27 list for the Guardian.

Bellow, we continue with a top 10 of ABBA’s less known singles, none of them ranked in the top 27.

A sweet, short and potent song.

For a moment Honey Honey might remind you of New Seekers, yet it hints ABBA quality that is still in the cooking pen of those early days embellished by a Eurovision victory. In fact, the song came in shortly after ABBA’s success on the stage in Brighton. It then spent months in the top 5 in West Germany, Austria, Spain, and Switzerland. The moderately successful Honey Honey was a premonition that the best is yet to come from Sweden’s ‘golden four’, and that this was not just another Eurovision winner who will die a quick death.

The song is said to be one of Agnetha Fältskog’s favorites. A greatest hits compilation she released in 1998 picked the name after the That’s Me single. It is a cheerful track with exciting piano and vocals coming together in perfect harmonies. And it was supposed to be a cheerful song since it was used as the B-side of ABBA’s most joyful release ever, Dancing Queen.

Björn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson were probably all too old to fit in a high school video, but this too was a popular choice to go for in the 1970s. Just remember the Grease musical with both Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta looking all-too-senior to fit a high school character. ABBA anyway had a perfect reason to return to high school: a funny song in which Agnetha’s voice erupts so powerfully as she talk-sings to us how One of these days / Gonna tell him I dream of him every night, referring to a comical teacher we see in the video.

Is this the ‘twin’ of SOS?

Hasta Manana also sounds bit hippy and wears a title that hints at ABBA’s secret love affair with the Spanish language (that will be official in 1980 when the band even released a studio album in Spanish, Gracias Por La Música). Their small 1974 single is a sentimental nostalgia, Hasta mañana ’til we meet again / Don’t know where, don’t know when Darling, our love was much too strong to die. The ABBA pathos prevails from beginning to end.

A sober hit from ABBA’s seventh studio album Super Trouper; Benny Andersson paid an homage with this track to his favorite band The Beach Boys. Set in a Mixolydian mode, the song’s chorus has a backing vocals arrangement that is distinctly influenced by Do It Again, a 1968 hit by The Beach Boys. Mike Love apparently admired it a lot, since he released a cover of On and On and On in 1981.

A gripping, captivating, enchanting gem from ABBA’s Arrival studio album. The track also pays an homage to city life… as soon as it opens, The city is a jungle, you better take care. Later on, it goes… The city is a nightmare, a horrible dream / Some of us will dream it forever, while at one more place we hear that the city is a prison, you never escape. Metaphorically, acting like a tiger can be a remedy. The poetic language is beautiful as it goes on to describe the tiger whose yellow eyes are glowing like the neon lights.

Released the year when they filed a divorce, When All is Said and Done is Benny and Frida’s version of The Winner Takes It All. It’s classy, painstakingly honest, and one last tribute to love… Here’s to us one more toast and then we’ll pay the bill. It’s one of ABBA’s most splendid tracks where Frida takes the lead vocal.

With a powerful violin intro and Agnetha’s authoritative energizing singing, the opening track of the Voulez-Vous album was not perfect enough to become the album’s lead single as well. Though, it does set the tone of what our expectation for the album should be: an hour of groovy, ecstatic disco tunes interrupted by nice classy ballads (at moments boring) such as Chiquitita and I Have a Dream. For better or worse, the two ballads greatly contributed to how this album was remembered, casting a long shadow to other tracks, including the last two we got here at the top of the list.

ABBA members saw If It Wasn’t For the Nights as one of the strongest tracks for their upcoming Voulez-Vous album during recording sessions. The same track was initially intended to take the responsibility of the album’s lead single as well. It remained an album track only, accompanied by an unofficial video footage seeing ABBA on stage in Japan.

Björn Ulvaeus impersonated his divorce feelings on this song. He admits in an interview: “There were times that last autumn I was with Agnetha that I had those nights myself.”

“My lyrics were often based around fiction, but that must have been where that one came from.”

A bit mysterious, authentic all the way; the style is neat. This was the B-side of the non-album single Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) and was featured on the 1979 Voulez-Vous album. Just like the two runner-ups on the list, The King Has Lost His Crown (the king who is also clumsy like a clown) was never recognized as an international hit.

Critics would comment this was much more personal song than many of the group’s previous work. Perhaps it was also a subtle premonition that ABBA ‘the king of music’ was slowly, assuredly losing the crown. When ABBA returned with new albums in the early 1980s, they brought some of their best tracks ever, like Lay All Your Love on Me and The Winner Takes It All, but The King Has Lost His Crown announces it all. It is that new melody, new ABBA sentiment which will inevitably send the group into a new era of unfortunately declining popularity.

In this context, The King Has Lost His Crown was a perfect early outro.

Stockholm knows a dedicated ABBA museum which is operating since 2013. Inside: one section is known as Waterloo, a faithful recreation of of the Eurovision stage in Brighton, 1974. A telephone booth known as Ring Ring; only ABBA members can call the number. A self-playing piano synchronized to play every time Benny Andersson plays at home.

Tags: ABBA, rankings, Stockholm, Sweden