On the fiftieth anniversary of Waterloo – the song, not the battle - one super-fan sits down to listen to the ABBA Gold album from start to finish, looking back over the half-century he has spent in the company of ABBA’s music, and attempting to unlock the secrets of its hold on him – and on all of us.
Partly a highly personal work of musical criticism, partly a history ABBA told through colourful vignettes, and partly the record of Giles' time spent trampling around damply in Sweden, braving the hardcore fans on ABBA Day in the Netherlands and somewhat reluctantly attending a sing-along screening Mamma Mia, this is Giles' mission to get to the very heart of ABBA. Starting out in the glam rock Seventies, its pages will inevitably contain possibly unwise quantities of satin and Spandex, and also descriptions of *trigger warning* cat dresses.
Nineteen tracks yield nineteen chapters, from ‘Dancing Queen’ to ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, to ‘Take A Chance on Me’, and onwards, eventually circling back (as all roads from ABBA eventually do) to ‘Waterloo’, the album’s final track. For Giles Smith, listening to each song gives rise to thoughts on pop music and the ways it attaches itself to us (and we to it), autobiographical reflections on the times, and ruminations on ABBA themselves - their story, their phenomenon, and the evolution of their presence in our lives.
It’s a book about growing old, and the things that never do. And it’s a book about fashion, snobbery, authenticity, critical judgement, the passage of time – and the triumphant ability of truly great pop music to transcend all of those things forever. But it’s also a book about the development of one of pop's greatest and best-loved albums, and an unabashed tribute to the power of a major-to-minor modulation and a well-placed glissando.
