Wednesday, May 2, 2018

ABBA's reunion is reason for hope

ABBA's reunion is reason for hope in an otherwise bleak world

The members of ABBA announced on Friday April 27, 2018, they have recorded new material for the first time in 35 years.

OPINION: Ladies and gentlemen, is hope too strong a word? I think not. For hope is the stuff of which we are made, the signature note of our species. And though there is plenty of reason not to feel hope, what with the repulsive Trump and the retreating ice-caps and my prostate clamping ever more firmly round the urethra like an anaconda squeezing the life from some innocent Bambi, nevertheless when I turned the television to an international news channel last night and heard the second item on the bulletin, something leapt from the waters of despair and flashed silver and alive and it felt remarkably akin to hope.
I am not, of course, referring to the story of the cuddly Korean with the oddball haircut and the ostensible change of heart. I can't see a man who's had most of his family murdered, and whose power is founded on keeping 20 million subjects in a. poverty, b. ignorance and c. d. and e. fear, and who has only achieved his current negotiating position by building nuclear weapons, renouncing nuclear weapons. Or, for that matter, when his entire empire is founded on a lie, keeping his word. Vide leopards and spots.
So it will come to nothing. A year from now vast batteries of guns will still be trained on Seoul, and the cuddly one will still have a cupboard full of nukes that it would be suicidal for him to use but equally suicidal for him to dismantle, and his 20 million hostages will still be dining on hedgerow soup. In other words, no news there.

Supplied

If ABBA is reforming then hope must still live.

But then came the second item and my eyes widened like the eyes of a throttled Bambi. And what widened them was joy, joy so uncontainable that I leapt from the chair and cried out.

READ MORE:
* ABBA back after 35 years
* 'Magical': What happened inside the recording studio with ABBA

'O Agnetha,' I cried. 'O Benny, Bjorn and Anni-frid!' (And even as cried I realised for the first time that the palindromic title by which these four are known derives from their initials.)

Robert Dear

Swedish pop group ABBA celebrate winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest on stage at the Brighton Dome in England with their song Waterloo. From left, Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad (Frida), Agentha Faltskog, and Bjorn Ulvaeus.

For the second item on the bulletin, ladies and gentlemen, was that ABBA are getting back together. I'll say it again while you absorb its import; Abba are getting back together. Now do you think hope is too strong a word? No, neither do I.
This is no mere reunion for old times' sake. Nor is it some cynical post-farewell-tour farewell tour in search of cash to pad the pension. No, ladies and gentlemen, this is a creative resurrection. For ABBA, hold your breath now, are going to release two new songs.
Of course, to call an ABBA song a song is to undersell it a thousand fold. Abba songs are art. They are wrought in the furnace of the finest minds. They speak in perpetuity of the human condition. And we are to have two more of them. How blessed are we?
My only worry is time. When ABBA erupted onto the global stage, their bodies housed in vinyl jump suits and their heads alive with ideas, they had an average age of twenty-something. Now they have an average age of 70.

Shakespeare was dead at 52. Mozart at 35. Schubert at 31. Are the septuagenarian Swedes still vitally alive? Are they still capable of a piercing historical analysis to match their youthful 'My my, at Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender'? Can they defy time's ever-strengthening prostatic grip, and come up with anything as profound as this epigrammatic couplet from 1977:
Ba ba ba ba baa, ba ba ba ba baa ba-ba
Honey I'm still free, take a chance on me.
We don't yet know. All we can do, ladies and gentlemen, is hope.

Comments

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14 hours ago

Trevor Ashman

ABBA won't be in their 60's/70's when the new songs are sung as it will be their ABBAtars from 1979 ....I hope the ABBAtar tour includes New Zealand, which sounds amazing :)

19 hours ago

tim machine

Didn't really get the mocking tone of this article. Are you a fan or not? I grew up in the 70's and ABBA sat quite happily with the rest of my music collection from that era, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Roxy Music, Led Zep etc... They were far more than a cheesy singles band. I personally can't think of many bands who music matured and just got better and better with every album, leaving the best till last, 'The Visitors' is still one of my top ten albums of the 80's.
I can't wait to hear the new songs and have every confidence it will be as good as their classic material.

20 hours ago

Commander-Koenig

Agnetha still sounds great (When you walk in the room) and with the decades away from serious in studio collaboration, they will be freshened up too... Of course it will be hard to separate the youthful 70's group from this latest resurrection, as there has been a leap in decades not a few years so any changes will obviously be more apparent... But I still expect ABBA to still have that iconic sound with a present day modern twist, and lyrics to match.. And this time around they will also have a larger slice of the U. S market too, which many don't realise they couldn't capture the 1st time around, so the Hologram show and new album promises to be huge worldwide.

20 hours ago

modern caveman

sound track of my puberty, first g/f and break up. do i want them to get back in the studio? aw heck...if they do i hope it's because of the music, not bills and tax. should icons be resurrected? harder question. to borrow from the excellent musi-documovie Twenty feet from Stardom "later we tried to recreate that sound but no matter how tight or on we were it still didn't fit. it was the sound of youth." watching with considerable interest.

21 hours ago

Pigeon1975

Very exciting stuff, this is the best news I've heard all year. I could have done without hearing about the authors prostate however.

24 hours ago

caniwism

And hope we do!!
I've heard that they will be performing these two songs via holographic avatars (or something equally technically cool) ... so one could (again) hope that if their voices are still solid and strong, and with their (younger?) selves being projected - it would be as close to as it was? I have hope that it will! :)

Betty MacDonald, a very special politician and a year ago

Roger Cicero - ESC winner 2007

Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever.

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Wednesday, May 2, 2018