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gengelcox's review
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Don’t read this book unless you don’t mind have Abba earworms for the next week. Or maybe a month. I don’t know how to get them to stop. But right now, “Dancing Queen” is playing in my head and when it stops, “Does Your Mother Know” will likely be next.
And that’s what makes Abba’s compilation of hits, Gold, the perfect subject for one of these 33 1/3 books. Vincentelli makes it clear that she knows everyone is rolling their eyes at the very idea of taking Abba seriously. Their image is permanently etched in the 70s, bell-bottom glitter and awkward dance moves and Benny’s smile. They were Sweden’s answer to the Carpenters: a wholesome foursome of tall white people with impeccable harmonies and a penchant for writing melodies that you absolutely could not forget. Not a rock band, although they had pretensions, but a pop band, and, yes, they were incredibly popular. The problem was, they were interesting. At least, not in the train wreck kind of way that epitomized 70s pop bands that got critical attention. Unlike the competing break-up songs of Fleetwood Mac’s Buckingham and Nicks, when the ABs split, they kept the dirty laundry out of their music.
This is an excellent book for putting all that music into context. Along the way you learn something about the origin of the four members, what made their music different from other pop bands (mainly, they didn’t record in England or America, content to use Swedish production studios and Swedish musicians), and their rise and fall and rise again with the Mamma Mia musical and innumerable cover bands, somewhat fueled by two movies that used their songs and brought them back into, if not fashion, at least a side limelight. I enjoyed it greatly and recommend it. Although, consider yourself warned about the earworms: the struggle is very, very real.
johnnyideaseed's review
4.0
A fascinating effort to trace how a band whose music was derided by the critical establishment of its time went on to become a legitimate pop cultural phenomenon in the 1990s and beyond. It works both as a history of ABBA, and as a meditation on how the music business works.
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