On The Appeal Of ABBA

For me its the harmonies of Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, but there's more to it, of course:

Part of the secret of the group's allure is ABBA's startlingly spiritual foundation. Says Matt Barton, curator of recorded sound at the Library of Congress, "Here and there, there's something that's so much like a hymn." In fact, notes Barton, ABBA organist Benny Andersson has gone on to record his interpretation of a Swedish hymn. Anyone who has ever gathered to sing up to the heavens has a little ABBA in his or her cultural DNA. No wonder the group has been known to provoke near Pentecostal fervor.

But it's not the gospel-choir-like charm of the music, or even the elaborate way it comes together, that makes ABBA enduring. No, it's the potent cocktail of the subliminally spiritual mixed with the flat-out libidinous. Listening to ABBA again lately, I've become increasingly aware of something I'd only vaguely perceived at all those "Does Your Mother Know?"-tinged wedding receptions and ironically themed gay bars -- this music is actually pretty damn sexy.

There's something undeniably, urgently compelling about a song like "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" a greedy love call for satisfaction (no wonder Madonna sampled its hook for "Hung Up"). It's there in the brazen sexual equanimity of "Voulez-Vous," with its shivery ah-has, and the kittenish oooohs of "Dancing Queen." The lyrics may not be quite Shakespeare or even Holland-Dozier-Holland, even if you grant extra slack for not having English as a first language. But oversaturated orchestration, the way the women's voices could soar through the changes in an "SOS" or "Knowing Me, Knowing You" -- they're forces too potent and insistent to be mere disco-era pastiche.