“Abba’s success is more about us than them”: Giles Smith looks back at a 50-year love affair

Word In Your Ear

Giles was 12 when he watched Abba win Eurovision in 1974 and was instantly besotted – and thus required to spend the next 20 years wrestling with The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. His thunderingly funny, fond and illuminating book – My My!: Abba Through The Years – traces their story, looks at the snobbery and critical mauling they endured and figures out how they made records so universally popular and which still move him to tears 50 years later. It’s also the best example of any book we’ve read that can explain the mechanics of music to a non-musician. It’s highly recommended, as is this podcast which alights upon …

… a 50 year-old story – “for 42 of which they haven’t existed”.

.. the vicious early press reaction - “calculatingly commercial”, “dispassionate” …

… the divine clunkiness of their early TV appearances.

… the sense of the melancholy we’ve attached to their music - and why.

... the immense value of splitting up early and never reforming or publicly falling out.

… the immaculate construction of Dancing Queen (which opens with the second half of the chorus) and why “there are two types of wedding disco – ones that start with Dancing Queen and terrible ones.”

… the maturity of Abba’s lyrics – about marriages, relationships, children and other subjects pop music rarely tackles.

… why Abba Voyage is so affecting that he’s seen it three times.

… and Muriel’s Wedding, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and other key factors in The Comeback.

Order Giles Smith’s My My!: Abba Through The Ages here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-ABBA-Through-Ages-ebook/dp/B0CF73GNN4

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