As an (American) musician living in Sweden, I have to say, I HATE MelodiFestival/Eurovision so much and I absolutely loathe Abba. They're awful, their songs are perfect examples of how Swedes think they are so smart, they know English, etc, but they don't at all get the joke. For example, the word "rolig" in Swedish means bot "fun" and "funny" but the meaning is context driven. Abba, however, never figured it out and tried to push the "fun" meaning into the English word "funny" (several times.) It's not cute. It's stupid. Polar Studios were all bigtime after the Abba hits, their production is shit! Abba is shitty! All the subsequent albums made there sounds shitty.
Oh my god, and the MelodiFestival crap—within 30 seconds of any song you can locate which famous songs of the past were plagiarized, and the presentation is the height of pageantry bullshit. Nothing to do with Melody, Song, Vision, or even music at all. The fact that so much money is poured into that shit is exactly why the entire Swedish music scene is filled with hacks who copy shit from an extremely privileged economy and produce pop for what it is today (e.g. Max Martin/Joker/etc type stuff for all the big money makers.) It's a travesty (literally, dressing as real music when it's basically spam) and destroys the entire public's idea of what music is or could be. The really good Swedish bands are never promoted. The Government pours money into MelodiFest. It's awful. Such a waste and it has destroyed so much by being the promoted thing to children, it ruins their understanding of music at an early age. Yuck. I hate this shit, the world would be so much better off without it. Hate. Hate hate hate.
Wow. You could not be more wrong. Abba was genius. There is so much bursting joy and genius (yes, genius) and sugar in the three minutes of "Dancing Queen" that I almost want to eat that song for dessert. Those two Abba dudes worked in the classic 20th century songwriting tradition of vaudeville, 50s pop, classical music, shlock rock, Latin pop, all of it. They were not trying to be deep. They just wanted to deliver beautiful chords and melodies and arrangements to be both disposable and memorable at the same time. It's a very hard balance to negotiate and many have failed. Abba was a giant in the history of pop. A world without them would have been infinitely poorer.
Those two dudes destroyed so much in their attempts to cover all forms of music. The musicals they made horribly wrecked such amazingly deep stories as The Emigrants/The Immigrants (go watch Jan Treoll's films of them and see how deep they they are, wrecked by Andersson for musical stage). And the only really Swedish music that exists, the amazing folk music centered around Dalarna, he kitched it up and sold it to the world as "The Orsa Spelmän" so that even that, the music that was real, the music that Izzy Young moved Sing Out from New York to Stockholm for, is now known through a watered down and re-orchestrated version, his attempts to popularize kill. You talk about the 20th century songwriting traditions as if it was necessary to plagiarize from all past traditions to be good, why do you feel that way? Do you understand how much of Swedish pop music is basically plagiarism?
What you are considering genius is naïveté, it's not cute. Considering them to be genius is tantamount to coddling, or othering them in the same way that orientalism turns Asian culture into cute and funny tropes of misspoken Engrish and strange obsession.
However, lest you think I am personally opposed to Benny altogether, I will praise him for having an entire change of consciousness a decade ago, when his daughter harassed him intently for not using his massive amounts of money for good, they ended up funding a new political party, the Feminist Initiativ, who are the most politically advanced party in Sweden now, all about human rights and equality (despite being named "feminist" it's really more "humanist"). They have managed to garner the 4% needed to enter the Stockholm Lans parliament, but not federal yet.
I totally get that, Jonathan! I imagine it comes off VERY differently in Sweden itself - and there seems to me to be little doubt that Greta Thunberg must cringe every time anyone mentions her mom's role in it. When I''ve watched it - from London - I have laughed and laughed, at the production, the glitz, the whole shebang. It's kitsch. But if you have read Clement Greenberg on kitsch, you'll remember that the distinction between high art and low art is really just a class distinction. Kitsch is, in his words, mechanical, reproducible, formulaic, spurious...but I think those of us enjoy it now enjoy it as a comment on, not as a part of, the awfulness of capitalism. Does that make sense?
From a musicianly point of view (i.e., yours) yeah, it's indefensible. I guess that's not how I was looking at it.
Greta's parents are professional actors. The fact of her Aspergers allowed her to not give a shit about the fake like this, and seeing how taken up by the fake all of her fellow high school students were (as are most teenagers here, they are incredibly privileged and awful) was what pushed her over the edge into school striking and cetera.
This is all super great context for my very off the cuff post, Jonathan. Maybe it’s time for an “Against Abba” book. You could do a 33 1/3rd book on one of their LPS (“Abba Gold” for example, their greatest hits - just to be really perverse) and bring all this in. I don’t think anyone has done one that discusses the effect of a band on a national music style...The call is out now for proposals. You should put one in!
Jesus H, you lost me right off the bat.
As an (American) musician living in Sweden, I have to say, I HATE MelodiFestival/Eurovision so much and I absolutely loathe Abba. They're awful, their songs are perfect examples of how Swedes think they are so smart, they know English, etc, but they don't at all get the joke. For example, the word "rolig" in Swedish means bot "fun" and "funny" but the meaning is context driven. Abba, however, never figured it out and tried to push the "fun" meaning into the English word "funny" (several times.) It's not cute. It's stupid. Polar Studios were all bigtime after the Abba hits, their production is shit! Abba is shitty! All the subsequent albums made there sounds shitty.
Oh my god, and the MelodiFestival crap—within 30 seconds of any song you can locate which famous songs of the past were plagiarized, and the presentation is the height of pageantry bullshit. Nothing to do with Melody, Song, Vision, or even music at all. The fact that so much money is poured into that shit is exactly why the entire Swedish music scene is filled with hacks who copy shit from an extremely privileged economy and produce pop for what it is today (e.g. Max Martin/Joker/etc type stuff for all the big money makers.) It's a travesty (literally, dressing as real music when it's basically spam) and destroys the entire public's idea of what music is or could be. The really good Swedish bands are never promoted. The Government pours money into MelodiFest. It's awful. Such a waste and it has destroyed so much by being the promoted thing to children, it ruins their understanding of music at an early age. Yuck. I hate this shit, the world would be so much better off without it. Hate. Hate hate hate.
Wow. You could not be more wrong. Abba was genius. There is so much bursting joy and genius (yes, genius) and sugar in the three minutes of "Dancing Queen" that I almost want to eat that song for dessert. Those two Abba dudes worked in the classic 20th century songwriting tradition of vaudeville, 50s pop, classical music, shlock rock, Latin pop, all of it. They were not trying to be deep. They just wanted to deliver beautiful chords and melodies and arrangements to be both disposable and memorable at the same time. It's a very hard balance to negotiate and many have failed. Abba was a giant in the history of pop. A world without them would have been infinitely poorer.
Those two dudes destroyed so much in their attempts to cover all forms of music. The musicals they made horribly wrecked such amazingly deep stories as The Emigrants/The Immigrants (go watch Jan Treoll's films of them and see how deep they they are, wrecked by Andersson for musical stage). And the only really Swedish music that exists, the amazing folk music centered around Dalarna, he kitched it up and sold it to the world as "The Orsa Spelmän" so that even that, the music that was real, the music that Izzy Young moved Sing Out from New York to Stockholm for, is now known through a watered down and re-orchestrated version, his attempts to popularize kill. You talk about the 20th century songwriting traditions as if it was necessary to plagiarize from all past traditions to be good, why do you feel that way? Do you understand how much of Swedish pop music is basically plagiarism?
What you are considering genius is naïveté, it's not cute. Considering them to be genius is tantamount to coddling, or othering them in the same way that orientalism turns Asian culture into cute and funny tropes of misspoken Engrish and strange obsession.
However, lest you think I am personally opposed to Benny altogether, I will praise him for having an entire change of consciousness a decade ago, when his daughter harassed him intently for not using his massive amounts of money for good, they ended up funding a new political party, the Feminist Initiativ, who are the most politically advanced party in Sweden now, all about human rights and equality (despite being named "feminist" it's really more "humanist"). They have managed to garner the 4% needed to enter the Stockholm Lans parliament, but not federal yet.
oops Troell not Treoll
People from afar very often love very awful american product. It comes through differently
I totally get that, Jonathan! I imagine it comes off VERY differently in Sweden itself - and there seems to me to be little doubt that Greta Thunberg must cringe every time anyone mentions her mom's role in it. When I''ve watched it - from London - I have laughed and laughed, at the production, the glitz, the whole shebang. It's kitsch. But if you have read Clement Greenberg on kitsch, you'll remember that the distinction between high art and low art is really just a class distinction. Kitsch is, in his words, mechanical, reproducible, formulaic, spurious...but I think those of us enjoy it now enjoy it as a comment on, not as a part of, the awfulness of capitalism. Does that make sense?
From a musicianly point of view (i.e., yours) yeah, it's indefensible. I guess that's not how I was looking at it.
Greta's parents are professional actors. The fact of her Aspergers allowed her to not give a shit about the fake like this, and seeing how taken up by the fake all of her fellow high school students were (as are most teenagers here, they are incredibly privileged and awful) was what pushed her over the edge into school striking and cetera.
This is all super great context for my very off the cuff post, Jonathan. Maybe it’s time for an “Against Abba” book. You could do a 33 1/3rd book on one of their LPS (“Abba Gold” for example, their greatest hits - just to be really perverse) and bring all this in. I don’t think anyone has done one that discusses the effect of a band on a national music style...The call is out now for proposals. You should put one in!
I heart Eurovision
I just can't tell you how much it hurts to hear people say such things. It's like saying "I love McDonalds".
agree - begging question; how is a Happy Meal different than some terrible piece of pop shlock. Maybe its not
Probably more alike than not, if you consider art to be a necessity to survival—you could speak of nourishment versus diabetic-coma-inducing media.
Well Theodor Adorno would agree with you.
“Oliver’s Army,” by Elvis Costello, is said to be based on the piano riff from “Dancing Queen.” That is all!
(And he was known to cover “Knowing Me, Knowing You.”)
!