Thank You for the Music: My ABBA Story

I must have been about eight years old the first time I heard ABBA. I remember the CD case cover, the black background of the graphic paper behind the plastic, the letters ABBA and Gold written in gold-ish color, so that one ‘B’ was turned the opposite way, resting its spine against the other B’s. I remember two small custom-made bedside wooden chests with single drawers in my parents' room, packed with CDs- ABBA, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Lucky Dube, Bob Marley, Westlife, Backstreet Boys and many others. There were movies too- Titanic, My Best Friend's Wedding, Prince of Egypt, The Lion King, Coming to America- some of the best of the eighties and nineties.

Growing up, my father had music playing on a loop almost every evening, and certainly every weekend. Most of the tracks were classics, old school funk and RnB, lots of reggae. His room was, a sacred shrine of sorts to music- the lights would be off, but we heard the beats from anywhere in the house- boom ka, boom boom ka. I was already a teenager when I found out that my father had done some DJ side gigs in his younger years. Not too long after I got into university, he bought a DJ controller.

The first track I loved on ABBA Gold was Chiquitita. The harmonious melancholia of the guitar tune swept me off my feet, the stunning arpeggios on the piano keys, and the encore at the end, ‘Try once more like you did before…’  delighted me. Years later I would fall in love with Mexican-style guitar riffs and I would begin to play the instrument. Years later I would realize- it wasn't a sad song at all- it was a song of encouragement from a loving friend to another. 

The entrancing melody of Fernando made it a second favorite. It bursts into playful melody, ‘There was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, Fernando..’ I thought it was a song reminiscing a lost love. It wasn't until adulthood I discovered that it told the story of a veteran’s nostalgia for war and his war-time comrades, perhaps, another kind of love.

Knowing me Knowing You was a little easier to understand, its lyrics, more obvious. Yes, ‘breaking up is never easy, I know’, I would nod to the lyrics. Breaking up had to be a hard thing indeed, I thought.

Super Trouper was very catchy- it was the one I sang all the time- just the chorus, of course. I did not know what it meant, only that  'somewhere in the crowd there's you’, and that was a good thing

I Have a Dream was different. I loved this song- however, my first introduction to it had been through the boy band Westlife. Finding the same song on a list of ABBA tracks confused me- who sang it first? I never got to decide which version I liked better.

I enjoyed The Winner Takes it all for its beautiful verse/solo. Later as an adult, I began to find the lyrics  a bit self-humiliating and defeatist (‘But tell me, does she kiss…Like I used to kiss you?’ are you kidding?).

Dancing Queen, undoubtedly, the greatest of them all, was a track that could turn any somber atmosphere around in seconds. Whether you were 8 or 80, You were a ‘dancing queen...Young and sweet…Only seventeen’. I would twirl to this one, pretending I was just a wee bit older.

Mamma Mia had been used as a jingle in a Nigerian spaghetti advert (I cannot recall what brand now but I’m placing my bets on Honeywell), so it had lost some of its appeal for me (until later years)

Lay All Your Love on Me was pleasant enough- to my childhood self, but of course, I did not get it's message. I liked Take a Chance on Me for its rhythm and happy-go-lucky tune.

I overlooked several of the songs on this album(Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!, Money Money Money, S.O.S., Thank you For The Music, Does Your Mother Know, One of Us) and did not get to really know them until decades later, when I watched the movie Mamma Mia!, starring Meryl Streep. This movie would make it into a top 10 list of movie favorites- not for a lot of film production-related reasons, but for the pure nostalgia of its music. 

Mamma Mia! brings Lay All Your Love on Me to life for me in the exchange between Sophie and Sky, but Its portrayal of Take a Chance on Me feels too much like begging for love. It takes Does Your Mother Know from racy and risky to playful- although I still get the odd discomfort now and then from those lyrics. It softens Thank You for the music (understandably for the scene in which it is used) to a piano arrangement with vocals. I listened to the original ABBA version again, and found it much more to my taste, the persuasiveness of its tone, because ‘in all honesty…What would life be? Without a song or a dance, what are we?’

In Mamma Mia!, other ABBA tracks found me; Honey Honey, Slipping Through My Fingers All The Time and Our Last Summer. While Our Last Summer induces in me a sort of hopeful, pleasant daydream of past and recent summer activities, Slipping Through My Fingers All The Time evokes an incredibly strong sense of longing for my own mother, as I watched through what must have been her perspective, as a young mother watching her child prepare for school, then as an older mother now having said child living in a different country, not being able to see or touch them for more than once a year at most(Then when she's gone, there's that odd melancholy feeling…And a sense of guilt I can't deny…). I could never listen to that track without tearing up. Honey Honey reacquiants you with the giddiness of love; you couldn’t sing it without grinning, and Amanda Seyfried as Sophie had one plastered to her face throughout as she sings-showing off her love to her friends (how he thrills me, aha, Honey Honey).

Yet there isn't a single ABBA track I hate. And if there were ever an ABBA reunion concert in my city, I'll be '...first in line'

And thus my journey into ABBA began, twenty-some years ago, before I ever watched Mamma Mia!, at a small flat in Lagos Nigeria, with a plastic CD case taken from a small, wooden bedside drawer, where I would spin the CD around in its case with my finger, pop it off its holder, and hold it to the light, to see the faint scratches running across its iridescence.