ABBA’s songs are an escapist treat in melancholy times

By R.L.

THERE is a scene in “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” in which Harry (Colin Firth) is snoozing through contract negotiations. They have been going on for 14 hours and, frankly, there’s somewhere else he would rather be. His interlocutors scold him: this deal could make his unspecified business the biggest in Europe! But Harry cares not. After some cheesy lines about the importance of family, he flees the boardroom and within moments is singing with old chums by the azure waters of Greece.

Harry’s getaway is analogous to the experience of watching the “Mamma Mia!” films, the second of which was released last week. For two hours the viewer gets to trade in their own dreary life for melodrama, Hollywood celebrities and ABBA songs. It is pure feel-good entertainment, as soothing as a Swedish massage. The films challenge the mind only to the point of wondering what tune the actors might launch into next. Escapism is the name of the game.

The same is true for listening to ABBA’s music, which, while often dealing with sad subjects, has a euphoric, transporting quality to it. Over the decades this has been described as both the band’s biggest weakness and its greatest strength. In pursuit of unforgettable melodies, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad laboured over their songs in the studio, but those songs were never designed to do anything other than get the listener’s toe tapping. When they rose to fame as a group in the early 1970s, in the shadow of the protests of 1968, left-wing commentators and musicians in Sweden took them to task for their apolitical lyrics and cheerful tunes. Punk and rock challenged the status quo and espoused rebellion; their pop music was concerned mostly with love and heartbreak. It was criticised as commercial, cloying and exploitative.

Carl Magnus Palm, the author of “The Real Story of ABBA: Bright Lights, Dark Shadows”, says that the group itself was nonplussed about such critiques: political messages “were a waste of a good tune”. At the same time, the band understood where that frustration came from. “When you have all these forces working to make things better in society,” Mr Andersson said, “it can be very provocative with a band that just runs around in platform boots and plays music.” That singular focus on making effervescent pop music makes ABBA easy to dismiss. They were neither socially conscious, radically experimental musically (though they did apply innovative “Wall of Sound” production techniques) or, as a pair of then-committed couples, edgy as a band.

But that dedication to universal themes and catchy tunes is also what makes them timeless, and a source of joy in anxious times. “Waterloo”, released in Britain in May 1974 as the winning Eurovision entry, quickly reached the top of the singles chart. The rollicking piano and saxophone number was a welcome distraction from soaring inflation, strikes, the oil embargo crisis and bombings carried out by the IRA. A recent exhibition at the Southbank Centre in London emphasised the grimness of the period and portrayed ABBA as a “breath of fresh air”.

The band resonated in a similar way in America, which had been transfixed by the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. “Waterloo” was competing with the likes of “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” and “Sweet Home Alabama”, which confronted the country’s two great crises head on. The song reached sixth position on the Billboard Hot 100 in August. A reviewer for Rolling Stone at the time heralded ABBA as “one of the most cheering musical events in recent months”: “Just when the top 40 was plumbing hitherto-unfathomable, moribund depths, along came their single, ‘Waterloo’...with the brightest, most exuberant sound around.”

The band went their separate ways in the 1980s, but the demand for that bright, exuberant sound did not. Gay men, in particular, took up the ABBA cause and heralded a revival of interest in the group. In his book, Mr Palm suggests that their music resonated on the gay scene due to a particular combination of “eminently danceable tracks”—“Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” was unsurprisingly a favourite—“kitschy fashion” and “words and music [that] sympathise with those who struggled with everyday life”. But, as has been pointed out, escapism was likely also a factor. As AIDS claimed thousands of lives, “Dancing Queen”, a song that espouses a theme common to gay anthems of “putting your troubles aside and partying”, provided a sort of hedonistic refuge.

Social and political upheaval also helps to account for the astonishing success of the first film, which was crammed full of ABBA hits. “Mamma Mia!” was released in July 2008, when the world was lurching towards a financial crisis. Though critics savaged the film’s plot and the actors’ thin attempts at the songs (pity Pierce Brosnan, whose voice has been compared to the cries of various animals), it brought in the money, money, money at the box office, taking $615m worldwide from a budget of $52m. To date, it is the fifth highest-grossing musical film of all time. “This is the classic time for us all to want a bit of sunshine, love and escapism,” one viewer wrote at the time. “There’s nothing like a recession for making us desperate for a light bit of relief.”

Similarly, “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” should capitalise on audiences’ desire for escape from talk of Brexit and the chaos of Donald Trump’s presidency. According to Variety, the film—at once a prequel and a sequel—has taken an estimated $34.4m in its opening weekend in America (the first film opened with $27m). Mr Brosnan has said that it offers a “great antidote to the times we live in”. If you need a bit of distraction, this film will have you thanking ABBA for the music—the songs you’re singing, and all the joy they’re bringing.