ABBAYears Of Operation 1972-1982Fits Between The Bee Gees and The Partridge FamilyPersonal Correspondence For a time, I couldn’t hear “Dancing Queen” without remembering the miserable year my family spent in Searcy, Arkansas, where my dad jockeyed the night shift at a pop radio station before we inevitably moved to another town and another station. (That line about “up and down the dial” in the WKRP theme song was painfully accurate.) Along with The Eagles’ “New Kid In Town” and Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice,” “Dancing Queen” immediately evokes a kind of go-nowhere melancholy, intentionally or not. But I think it’s partly intentional. As hooky and danceable as ABBA’s songs can be, they carry a stiff chill that keeps them from being “joyous,” per se. In their era—and now, I suppose—ABBA’s often dismissed as too technically precise and frothy, but I’m constantly surprised by how many structural surprises I find in songs like “Mamma Mia,” which take some crooked paths to get to their naggingly catchy choruses.Enduring presence? From a critical standpoint, ABBA’s reputation was on the brink of being rehabilitated before that damn musical opened, and in-laws and spouses everywhere dragged budding music nerds to see it, thus turning them off ABBA forever. Myself, the only ABBA disc I have is Gold, the hits collection, and I expect that 10 or 11 of that record’s 20 tracks will suffice for the rest of my life. (I mean, I respect ABBA, but I wouldn’t call them a “subject for futher study,” to use hardcore critical parlance.).
Tom checks the Arbitron's frequently and ABBA=listeners.