Without having a formula or a recipe to follow, on the contrary, admitting that several times their tapes ended up in the trash, the construction of credibility as a group was behind each letter, each harmony and each melody. Thus, ABBA marked the pulse of the music of the 70s. 2021 seems to be the year in which the group, after decades of separation, will release new music.
Tension, friction, pure joy, but also nostalgia and melancholy, that is ABBA, an ode to emotions, a journey through feelings and the enjoyment of life. His first song, People need love , warned him: “People need hope, people need love, people need trust in one another, people need love to earn a living, people need faith in a helping hand.” In a world dominated by music that came from the United Kingdom and the United States, a small Scandinavian country gave birth to a group that marked the pulse of the music of the 70s. Exploring new sounds and new lyrics, as well as breaking down borders musicals of his country singing in English, was the premise of the Swedish group. Striving to get a song as best as possible, despite knowing that the one that came the next day could be better than the previous ones, and that the effort of daily work was the only certainty in the midst of the uncertainty that being an artist brings, was your day to day.
And yes, American and British music was a constant in the lives of Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad, especially as teenagers, but also the German schlager , Italian ballads and the chanson formed part of their musical universe, and from there they took hold to create an exotic bet, a unique sound that is neither pop nor rock, it is the sound of ABBA. Without having a formula or a recipe to follow, on the contrary, admitting that several times their tapes ended up in the trash, the construction of credibility as a group was behind each letter, each harmony, each melody, beyond their songs. will sound in the musical epicenters of the time. Eurovision, the musical contest to which the attention of all Europe was turned, rejected them the first time, but Waterloo, that song that takes up Napoleon’s defeat, and that says “I tried to stop you, but you were stronger, and now it seems that my only option is to give up the fight ”, he put them at the center of the musical map. Now what? The truth is that there was no answer, the path was marked by trial and error. The only certainty was that the doors of the world began to open to them and as such they had to respond.
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Some cabins located on Viggsö Island, in the Swedish archipelago, were the epicenter of his inspiration. In the mornings, when Ulvaeus heard the first notes Andersson played on the piano, announcing to his partner that he was ready to let the passage of time inspire them, an eternal journey of composition began. Stripping their souls, having the piano and acoustic guitar as their only protection, finding the correct tempo of the songs took hours. Patience and uncertainty accompanied them. Titles like Fernando and Dancing Queen were born there, in that musical paradise, but the life behind those lyrics gave them spontaneity and creativity within the recording studio.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsThe obsession for the sounds of Michael B. Tretow, for those crazy and out of the ordinary, led the band to consolidate its own identity based on the desire they had to innovate, despite the low budget they had to do so. Lacking money, they had determination and imagination. Recursion was his ace up his sleeve. They already had the lyrics, the musical composition, the harmonies in the female voices, they needed to maximize their sound, break in with it. Recording the guitar, superimposing a second recording of the instrument on the first and minimally altering the speed between the two pieces created “the wall of sound” with which ABBA managed to give life to the Mamma Mia echo, that mark that allowed them to take off as a group and mark its territory in the history of music.
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Recognizing that a title did not work, that the order of the verses on the paper was wrong and taking advantage of the differences between them to enlarge the group, that is, learning step by step, helped them make their songs hymns of the time . Some of them have even remained unharmed over time. Dancing Queen , that song that from the first verse calls to joy, to enjoy life in the moment, which places the listener in a time and in a space of full joy, where dance rules everything else, initially it didn’t have that title. On paper, the song was called Boogaloo, but knowing that a piece is not finished until the last moment, that the arrangements that the song demands have to be made, made it the theme we know today.
ABBA kept their music alive for almost a decade. The group, in its last stage, perhaps the most mature, bared its soul through its lyrics. Although their compositions always came from their own experience, from what they saw on a daily basis, marked by a stamp of authenticity that made them make music far from the United Kingdom and the United States, their last songs revealed the soul behind the artists , showed the soul of the four human beings behind the musical phenomenon. Thus was born The winner takes it all, a song that allowed them to let go and live the emotions that resulted from the ruptures within the group, because they, in addition to having a musical project, tried to maintain a life project in common. And yes, releasing that song was a matter of debate, it was a moment of extreme sensitivity and vulnerability, but it also meant the opportunity to be able to imprint one’s own emotions on the lyrics.
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Recognizing the limits of a project and knowing when to move away, with the idea of not harming what has been built over years of work, led the world to have to say goodbye to ABBA. Ulvaeus and Andersson continued in music, they were the ones who wrote the lyrics for Chess , the musical, and they played an active role in bringing ABBA’s songs to the stage and into the seventh art, but Fältskog and Lyngstad, despite trying to have a solo career, they decided to withdraw from music for a time. The first, even, confessed that throughout ten years she stopped singing and playing, because she decided to close herself completely and take refuge in silence. Lyngstad, for her part, acknowledged that she stopped listening to those songs that were once part of her life, as she decided to move the sound of ABBA as far away from herself as possible. However, cassettes with some of the remastered songs made her change her mind. Listening to those recordings, over and over again, allowed him to recognize his own voice, as well as that of his partner, and to understand the mark ABBA has left in history. It only remains to say: “Thank you for the music, for the songs that I am singing, thank you for all the joy you bring. Who could live without this? I ask honestly. What would life be without a song, without a dance? So I say: Thank you for the music, for having given all this to me ”.
