Unless you're aware of the recent onslaught of Nordic indie-rock, mostly two kinds of music from Sweden have made any sort of dent: ABBA and recent death-metal bands sprung from the underworld like so many Viking odes to Thor. Death-metal I know nothing about. But I do know about ABBA. In 1974, as though a cosmic coincidence, ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with “Waterloo,” just as I emerged into the world. I was a little lass in a red brick house in Sweden, where the summers provided twenty hours of daylight, and the winters provided twenty hours of dark. The seasonal lack of sunshine must have spurred ABBA on to crank out such pristine pop. The nordic snow and bleak winter sun could inspire the saddest of heartache melodies, still with a glimmer of light.
My father’s collection of vinyl consisted of classical music, opera, and plenty of Ray Conniff Singers albums. ABBA was probably the only other thing we really listened to. And when Frida and Agnetha hit some of those angelic harmonies, the little hairs on my arms would stand up straight, and I’d have to catch my breath. Thus my first conscious awareness of ABBA grew into a lifelong obsession.
ABBA inspired lip-synching contests for the neighborhood children. The girl next-door, Åsa, and her friends would play ABBA records in her bedroom. I was only three years old, and had no idea what I was listening to, but I envied these “big kids” singing in their hairbrushes like rock stars. Eventually, I learned how to sing convincingly into household objects, just like Åsa. My other neighbor, Titti Persson, often propped a discarded door on top of two chairs in her garage, making a little stage for our ABBA sing-alongs. And there is no better microphone than a jump-rope with a long “cord” that you could drag behind you while you danced.
One summer, after a visit to my mother’s family in Finland, I asked to stay behind another week. My parents thought that would be okay, even though I was only seven or eight, but their departure elicited a violent homesickness in me. My aunt could not bring me back to Sweden until the next week, so daily tearful phone calls helped ease the separation anxiety, but it was not until my parents greeted me with hugs and kisses, and an ABBA cassette that I felt okay. Songs like “Hey Hey, Helen,” and “Tropical Loveland” and “S.O.S.” stayed in my head from that time on. I played that tape until it was completely garbled, and I still have it in a box. Dad had also built an art desk in my room, and on that desk, I made a drawing of ABBA in a row-boat. The girls had crowns and princess dresses on. My father sent it to their record label, and they sent me back an autographed photo!
My cousin, Viveca, had the ABBA albums that I didn’t have, and vice versa, so whenever our families got together, we eagerly played all the ABBA songs. The fact that these fellow Swedes in their vamp-y costumes sang in English added even more glamour. Viveca and I attempted to phonetically sound out the lyrics, but only jumbled nonsense came out. One of our favorites was “When I Kissed the Teacher” (and we knew just enough about the song lyrics.) We did not share any Freudian obsessions with teachers, but that maddeningly beautiful chorus was so breathtaking. We fought about who would get to dress up in our grandmother’s vintage evening gown. When we wore that bright turquoise dress with white lace edging, prancing around the attic loft, we were ABBA.
The summer of 1979, we made our yearly trip to our grandparents’ in southern Sweden. My father bought the “Voulez-Vous” album and played it on my grandfather’s turntable. The title track with it’s impeccable “a-ha, a-ha” made an indelible impression on my mind, as I sat on the green velvet chair in my grandparents’ family room. However, the song that really provoked dizzy delight in me was “Angeleyes.” I still almost burst into happy tears listening to it.
In 1981, my sister Christine was born, and I remember it as vividly as the birth of my brother four years prior. To celebrate the birth, my parents bought presents for us older siblings. My brother probably got some Legos, and I was given the “Super-Trouper” album, and all the songs on that album will forever be connected with the birth of my sister.
Three years later, we moved to the US, those ABBA albums helped us feel connected to “home.” Finally, in 1993, I bought the ABBA box set on cd, all goose-pimply with anticipation, hearing songs that I had not heard for years. It was still so fresh and unmarred in my ears. All this time had not diminished the beauty of their songs. The chronological anthology laid out their different musical phases in all its glory. There is something so inspiring and gut-wrenching about ABBA. Whenever I play that whole box set from start to finish, I actually grow melancholy as it nears the end, because the end of the third disc marks the end of their career. ABBA has become so much more to me than a band with some big hits. They are almost an entity in my mind. Satisfying moments of smiling, dancing and at times even crying have filled out the last 28 years, and ABBA was somehow always part of the soundtrack.