Moopy's Top 50 ABBA Songs - FULL RESULTS ON PAGE 14

Pingu said:
17. Take A Chance On Me
Single from The Album
Released: 1977
Score: 8.7

Next up, we have the first ABBA song I was ever aware of (because of it being the opening segment on the Thank ABBA For The Music Brits medley), and I have to admit it's not one that I've ever been totally crazy about. Yes it's extremely catchy, but it almost seems like a leftover from their earlier years when put next to some of the other tracks on The Album. That said, its hit credentials can't be denied, and it brings us ABBA at their most playful, which is fun to see (even if some aspects of the music video haven't aged all that well - what on earth is Agnetha doing at 1:03 with Bjorn leering at her in the next shot?).

It's one of a select handful of ABBA songs that managed to be a hit absolutely everywhere, and it has stood the test of time. Perhaps some of this is due to all the hooks running through it, including the "take a chance, take a chance" backing vocal motif, which came to Bjorn when he was out jogging one morning and the "t-k-ch" sound of his feet along the wet pavement stuck with him. Also that's not a loop - apparently the boys really did record themselves singing that the whole way through the song, only stopping when they ran out of breath, with the various takes stitched together at the end.

Highest scores: @Lockhart (10), @Devil (10), @BoysForSeles (10), @Tisch (10), @Iguana (10), @Hak (10), @Madison (10), @dmlaw (10), @Jark (10)
Lowest scores: @Suomi (4), @dUb (5)

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it’s not my favourite song of theirs but the … it’s Magic .. bit is .. MAGIC
 
Top ten coming right up, but first here's the most popular track from each album NOT to make it into the top 50:

Ring Ring:
80. Disillusion (6.01)

Waterloo:
71. Hasta Mañana (6.34)

ABBA:
51. I've Been Waiting For You (7.15)

Arrival:
63. Why Did It Have To Be Me? (6.6)

The Album:
56. I'm A Marionette (6.86)

Voulez-Vous
58. Lovers (Live A Little Longer) (6.79)

Super Trouper
52. The Way Old Friends Do (7.11)

The Visitors
65. I Let The Music Speak (6.55)

Voyage
67. Just A Notion (6.48)
 
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I'm trying desperately hard NOT to try and work out the songs left.
 
10. Voulez-Vous
Single from Voulez-Vous
Released: 1979
Score: 9.02

First up in the top ten is one of the songs that immediately come to mind from the ABBA does disco era of the late 70s. The Voulez-Vous album is known as the group's disco record, and rightly so, but still it's definitely disco of a unique ABBA brand, with tons of European influences intertwined with the more Americanised rhythms and grooves. Out of all the tracks from that era, the title track is probably the one that could be described as the closest to pure disco, and there's good reason for that. Finding the environment in Sweden incredibly stifling to creativity and having spent much of 1978 with bad writers' block, B&B persuaded their American record label to fly them out to the Bahamas and put them up in a beach house for a songwriting trip - I'm making a mental note to try that with my work.

In fairness, it helped a lot, as a handful of the songs from the album were written on that trip, and they found what was to become Voulez-Vous so promising, they decided to gather together some musicians and some of the most sought after disco producers and engineers of the time and lay down the backing track in Miami. It was the only time they recorded something outside of Sweden and with session musicians other than their core favourites, and it shows in the finished product, with the sunshine practically glaring through the speakers. Despite being the "second" A-side in the UK, it was the group's clear preference, with the music video featured on Top of the Pops and the song going on to have much more of an afterlife than Angeleyes.

Highest scores: @Madison (11)
Lowest scores: @dUb (6), @Suomi (6)

 
lolly said:
I'm trying desperately hard NOT to try and work out the songs left.
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Yes I've slightly closed the door after the horse has bolted, but I've put the post in spoiler tags now. I was trying to think of a stat that didn't give too much away but I realise I might have narrowed the field ever so slightly!
 
I've always been confused the other French lyric "La question c'est voulez-vous" sounds like "pack es joseph" and I just can't make the actual lyrics fit.
 
I do regret not being able to get a vote together in time but these write ups are fabulous.

And a typically moopy FIASKOT results-wise, largely determined by a handful of tactical voters and a few no-drag-knowledge agents of chaos headshotting all time classics based on a YouTube clip.
 
9. The Visitors
Single from The Visitors
Released: 1981
Score: 9.16

The opening track from ABBA's then-final album really lets you know that something different is in store. The eerie opening; Frida's effect-laiden, discordant vocals; the ambiguous and unsettling lyrics; if you were only familiar with Dancing Queen and Take A Chance On Me up until this point, you may have thought the wrong record had been inserted into the cover. This is ABBA, but not as you know them. I'd imagine that when fans and critics talk about how off-beat and miserable the final album is, the title track is front and centre of their minds.

The lyrics are told from the point of view of dissidents of the Soviet regime at the height of the Cold War, but rather wonderfully, Bjorn didn't lay this explanation out at the time, giving the whole thing a sense of mystery. Of course the whole thing explodes and in its own way, it is unmistakeably ABBA, but this is a really fantastic lesson in surprising and delighting people. The group themselves were starting to tire of ABBA by this point, but this song, along with the whole album it forms a part of, shows that if they had wanted to continue, B&B could absolutely have made their expanded songwriting ambitions work within the pop format, and we could have got some fantastic results from it. Thank the pop gods we got this at least!

Highest scores: @Christian (11)
Lowest scores: @BoysForSeles (7)

 
Diddy said:
I do regret not being able to get a vote together in time but these write ups are fabulous.

And a typically moopy FIASKOT results-wise, largely determined by a handful of tactical voters and a few no-drag-knowledge agents of chaos headshotting all time classics based on a YouTube clip.
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Indeed, only on Moopy. :D:eyes:
 
For ages I thought they were singing to a “master of the sea” in Voulez-Vous, which gave it an interesting piratey/shore-leave spin.
 
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They really excelled at the sinister and perfected tragedy by the end.
 
Madison said:
For ages I thought they were singing to a “master of a sea” in Voulez-Vous, which gave it an interesting piratey spin.
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I bought an ABBA Gold lyrics book early on, so learned the lyrics early on. I can probably accurately recite most of Gold and More Gold.
 
It's basically about casually pulling a hot stud in a club from the POV of a hot slut. Again. Relatable content.
 
Diddy said:
I do regret not being able to get a vote together in time but these write ups are fabulous.

And a typically moopy FIASKOT results-wise, largely determined by a handful of tactical voters and a few no-drag-knowledge agents of chaos headshotting all time classics based on a YouTube clip.
Click to expand...
It’s not tactical voting. I don’t like the thing. I would genuinely rather listen to almost anything else in their discography ahead of it. That’s okay, I hope.
 
dmlaw said:
It’s not tactical voting. I don’t like the thing. I would genuinely rather listen to almost anything else in their discography ahead of it. That’s okay, I hope.
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Not really.

Homophobe.
 
Pingu said:
Top ten coming right up, but first here's the most popular track from each album NOT to make it into the top 50:

Ring Ring:
80. Disillusion (6.01)

Waterloo:
71. Hasta Mañana (6.34)

ABBA:
51. I've Been Waiting For You (7.15)

Arrival:
63. Why Did It Have To Be Me? (6.6)

The Album:
56. I'm A Marionette (6.86)

Voulez-Vous
58. Lovers (Live A Little Longer) (6.79)

Super Trouper
52. The Way Old Friends Do (7.11)

The Visitors
65. I Let The Music Speak (6.55)

Voyage
67. Just A Notion (6.48)
Click to expand...

OMG I The Music Speak for crying out loud :oi:
 
8. Don't Shut Me Down
Single from Voyage
Released: 2021
Score: 9.16

Where to start with this one?! What a comeback! What a reward for everyone who waited 3 long years from that announcement. What a reward for the original fans who had waited 40 years for new music. I had assumed when I heard the group describing I Still Have Faith In You that it would make me a bit weepy. However it was this one that was the more emotional listen for me. Maybe it's because after we all fretted ever so slightly (some louder than others @Alias #541) over whether or not they still "had it" as a group, it was such a joyous relief to hear the ABBA sound come right back, every bit as good as it had been in the past.

Of course Benny and Bjorn could still write an ABBA song! They just hadn't had to for the last few decades. Everyone here is playing to their strengths. The girls' voices might sound slightly older, but it's a brand new ABBA song, we want to hear them in 2021, and those layered vocals and harmonies are still as heavenly as ever - it's uncanny. Agnetha still has that excellent storytelling quality to her voice, Frida is still there providing a really strong backing and rounding out the round, Bjorn has written one of his classic domestic stories (with the added twist of the song actually being a message from the group to their fans), and Benny has finally mellowed enough in his old age to even put in some self-referential flourishes into the music. Everyone plays to their strengths on here. It was unbelievable enough that the group decided to record again after all these years, but seriously, what an absolute treat they gifted us in this song, and how incredible in this age of streaming and TikTok that it actually managed to earn them a 20th UK Top ten single in the process.

Highest scores: @dUb (10), @Pingu (10), @Devil (10), @Tisch (10), @Iguana (10), @HerSereneHighnessAnniFrid (10), @VoR (10), @Hak (10), @dmlaw (10), @Jark (10)
Lowest scores: @ZenGiraffe (5)

 
(Also please rig it for limited suburban lass ELAINE to get her moment in the sun)
 
7. SOS
Single from ABBA
Released: 1975
Score: 9.32

In a career as successful and enduring as ABBA's, with such a rich body of work to their names, there will obviously be a lot of defining milestones and essential tracks when it comes to piecing together the legacy. That said, I'm not sure I can think of a track quite as important as this when it comes to cementing their success and elevating their career beyond flash-in-the-pan territory. Obviously Waterloo had been a huge hit, but after that, the group's career had more or less gone down the expected route for most 70s Eurovision winners with a few minor hits here and there, and an expectation (on these shores at least) that they'd probably fade back into obscurity or go back to wherever these Eurovision acts come from to do whatever it is they do.

In fairness, most of their material in the year and a half after their Eurovision win was very much of "Eurovision follow-up" standard, until SOS came along and DJs, critics and the public sat up and took notice. With classical flourishes, a yearning lead vocal from Agnetha and an earworm of the chorus, it set the standard for what was to come from ABBA but showed that they had so much more depth to them as a group, and a sound that they could truly call their own. Knowing what came afterwards, the lyrics to SOS are really pretty basic with hindsight, but the very fact that they were veering towards the bleak and the heartbreak showed real strides forward, and they've never looked back. This also seems to be the song singled out the most by other bands, many of whom were much more "credible" than ABBA ever were, as a masterclass in pop writing, showing that back in the day even when it wasn't cool to like ABBA, they were always musicians' musicians.

Highest scores: @Ag (10), @Marilyn (10), @Sheena (10), @Tisch (10), @Iguana (10), @lolly (10), @HerSereneHighnessAnniFrid (10), @VoR (10), @Madison (10), @dmlaw (10), @Suomi (10), @Jark (10)
Lowest scores: @ZenGiraffe (7)

 
It's interesting looking at the songs that people have awarded 9.5s, and that a lot of them tend to cluster around the same songs - ones that may have done better had people had unlimited 10s to give out. Mamma Mia was one of them as I mentioned before. Don't Shut Me Down was another, with people perhaps not feeling "right" about giving something so new a 10 in place of a classic.

The next song is another one with quite a few "honorary 10s" (but also quite a lot of real ones and some 11s as well).
 
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I toyed for a long time with giving Don’t Shut Me Down a 10 before knocking off 0.5 because I really don’t like the title/title line. But if it had around for years, it expect it wouldn’t feel so odd.
 
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When I first heard I Still Have Faith In You I thought the ABBA comeback was going to be one of those things that was exciting for 5 minutes but ultimately nobody would really care about the new material beyond the initial flush of hype.

Hearing Don’t Shut Me Down and quickly realising that it was genuinely worthy of ranking alongside their ABBA Gold classics…

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6. If It Wasn't For The Nights
Album track from Voulez-Vous
Released: 1979
Score: 9.36

Well I'm absolutely thrilled about this! I instantly fell in love with this song when I heard about 15 seconds of it in an ABBA documentary back in 1999. With it being 1999 of course, it took me another three years or so to actually find out what it was and track it down, but boy was it worth it. I've often suspected that this is the ultimate ABBA hidden gem, with it not being included on ABBA Gold, or More Gold, or in the soundtrack for the Mamma Mia! stage show, film or sequel, and now that's been more or less confirmed as it becomes the highest placed album track on this countdown, just as @Devil predicted.

It could have been so different, as it was very nearly chosen as the first single from Voulez-Vous, with the group even having started promoting it and mentioning it in interviews. Then those damned starving children got in the way and Chiquitita was drafted in at the last minute. I suppose from a commercial perspective, Chiquitita did prove itself to be the right choice, and a part of me is happy that little piece of ABBA magic is reserved for those of us who are big fans or at the very least want to make the effort to delve into their more obscure works. Have they ever made a song that is more euphoric and joyous musically but so soul-crushingly bleak lyrically? I know that that was always their major selling point, at least for us gay chat lounge regulars, but this must be the best example of such a combination ever. A richly-deserved final placing for the song that always deserved more.

Highest scores: @HerSereneHighnessAnniFrid (11), @dUb (11)
Lowest scores: @dmlaw (5)

 
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