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As this is possibly the most famous and most-discussed track that I've ever written about on here, I have to admit a definite temptation to duck the whole question and just link to some slightly embarrassing adverts they did. But that'd be wrong.
So, 'Dancing Queen', then. A transatlantic Number One single and a record many people genuinely believe to be the greatest of all time. Now, I can't realistically claim to be one of them, but I can see their point. I suppose I have a bit of an awkward relationship with Abba really; I'm not quite old enough to have been aware of them when they were together, so I lived through that whole period when it was laughable to like them but by the time I started really caring about music, we were well into the period ushered in by this release when it became totally socially unacceptable ever to say anything negative about them. Couple that with VH-1 starting in the mid-1990s and seeming to have Abba Weekend every two weeks and the seemingly ceaseless cavalcade of self-consciously broad-minded cover versions and you've pretty much exhausted my expertly-produced Swedish pop patience. I'm still prepared to stick my neck out and say that all the ballads are rubbish, but even if I can never love this record I can certainly appreciate what impressed people about it - the crucial blend of joy and sadness as the narrator looks from afar at the Dancing Queen who seems to be having so much more fun than her. And yet the Queen herself is an oddly haunted figure too. It seems like an icy wind is blowing through this record (or maybe it's just December) and aren't sad upbeat songs better than sad slow ones? Even the luxuriant production feels like a coat to keep the chill out, with that much-imitated descending piano line to try and keep the mood up. I'm also rather fond of that little string riff that comes in over the fade-out. Maybe there should have been more of that.
And that's probably as much as I need to say, because it feels like everybody in the world (or at least the UK) now owns Abba Gold, as a trailer for which this song was re-issued (with the slightly re-edited video above). Some attribute this success to Erasure's summer hit with the Abba-Esque EP, although the album was probably released for the more prosaic reason that the UK rights to the catalogue had just reverted to Polydor. Perhaps we should gloss over the fact that 'Dancing Queen' was only 16 years old in 1992, and that that year itself is now 17 years behind us?
Available on: The Albums
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