ABBA as accomplished and serious musicians

For me, this is an especially interesting topic, but also I find it very difficult to get a handle on it. Where to start? The songs, the arrangements, the vocals... So many different and fascinating aspects to their musicianship which can be discussed.
 
I don't know how much Bjorn contributed to ABBA's music (as opposed to the lyrics) - perhaps more so earlier on? - but I'm assuming this side of things was mostly down to Benny. In any case, Benny is such a special talent when it comes to popular music, able to go from the delightful, immediate, tunefulness of Dum Dum Diddle to the quasi-operatic I Let The Music Speak. He seems to have an intuitive understanding of musical form, not needing to repeat things ad nauseam which I think happens quite often through lack of awareness or ideas. Benny obviously has that awareness and the ideas.

Then there is Benny's keyboard playing. Although I would have liked him to have used the acoustic grand piano more, what he did on keyboards in ABBA was another plus for their sound and appeal. I'm thinking of SOS, the outro of LAYLOM, that sparse little riff at the start of TDBYC... So many wonderful things!

Picking up on shoshin's idea of revisiting older threads during this very slow time for this forum, I think this one was worthy of more of a response. In fact, as you can see, it only got one (from me).

As I mentioned in my post, above, I've always been interested in how much Bjorn actually contributed to the music. You see those photos of Benny and Bjorn sitting together in their little 'composing hut', back in the day, Benny at the piano and Bjorn with his guitar. It gives one the impression that these songwriting sessions - focused on the music, I assume - were thoroughly joint efforts, contradicting the assumption that Benny was 'the one' when it came to the music side of things; and yet I still take it for granted that he was. But perhaps I'm wrong about that, at least during their early to middle career, before 'Bjorn, the Lyricist' became his primary role?
Any thoughts about this?

Another thing springs to mind:
How much did the girls contribute to working out the vocal arrangements for themselves? Or was all 'handed down' to them, so to speak? Much of it is so intricate and multi-layered that I'm guessing Agnetha and Frida did, indeed, have a major input as to how their vocals turned out, at least in terms of the harmonies. For example,  Frida does some fascinating little lower harmony things in DYMK that it makes me wonder if it comes solely from her rather than from the guys.

Tony (HOMETIME) has suggested elsewhere on this forum the desirability of a documentary series dealing with the various aspects of ABBA's musicianship, especially the ins and outs related to their recordings. That would be wonderful, of course, but if that doesn't happen we still have fascinating, if sometimes frustrating, conjecture! (Maybe we would have known more about these things by now had Bjorn and Benny had questions from more curious music journalists over the years?)

For some time I've had this tentative notion - tentative because it's based on admittedly pretty flimsy 'evidence' - that TDBYC is mostly down to Bjorn, words and tune. I suggest this might be the case because I regard the song as beng such a tight marrying of words and music, and since the music always came first in their songwriting, I've read, and because the song has the feel for me of being lyrically driven... So it's Bjorn.
As I said, tentative and flimsy - and so most likely totally wrong! 

If you're right, Tony, about Bjorn's possible contributions to a lot of the top, melodic, lines to ABBA's songs, he definitely deserves more recognition and due credit for the music side of things, not only the lyrics. And I also agree with regard to Agnetha and Frida for any of their significant musical input.
Of course, this is not to ignore Benny at all - one of the all-time great composers of popular songs. That's a given when it comes to ABBA, Chess, etc.

That's interesting. If Bjorn is right about Benny being the musical motor of ABBA (and I've always assumed that was the case), I wonder what that actually meant in the context of their writing the music for the songs together? Does it imply that Benny had most of the crucial musical ideas, and that Bjorn was the astute 'aider and abettor' (of course, in a benign, not crime, sense!), offering something useful here and there before he started working on the lyrics? In other words, a somewhat secondary, or supportive, role when it came to writing the music.

Maybe that was how it worked. Of course, short of them telling us, we'll never know.

I think it simply wasn't common to acknowledge such contributions. Even the session musicians would deserve a writing credit or at least arrangements credit now and them. Many of the bass lines in ABBA's songs are Rutger Gunarsson's inventions for example... Or the famous Soldiers' rhythm pattern, that "disguises" it's actually waltz is Ola Brunkert's idea. And it's not just ABBA's songs... the guitar riff that's an essential part of Roxette's The Look is by the session guitarist Jonas Isacsson, yet Per Gessle is the only writer credited.

That's a good question. In a recent episode of Tim Rice's podcast, he praises Björn for writing some of the best lines, and then goes on to say that he served as a "crucial bridge between me and Benny", perhaps a somewhat dubious compliment.

broadwaypodcastnetwork.com/get-onto-my-cloud/the-beginnings-of-chess/

By the way, I'm really curious what kind of input Björn had during writing of the "new" (old by now) ABBA material. I somehow can't imagine that Benny would be able to work the way they did during ABBA's active career after decades of composing the music on his own. So has Björn contributed just the lyrics?

I was always curious about this too. Then, a few years ago, some songs were "unmixed" for the benefit of the cast of the Mamma Mia movies.* One of those songs was Our Last Summer and the music underneath that heroic guitar solo is a passage from Anthem - it's the instrumental section just before "how can I leave her? Where would I start?" The electric guitar effectively obscures it, but it's definitely there.





* Some of those tracks were leaked and they reached a few of us on the old forum....

An ABBA song that comes to mind at present that has a (sung) bridge/middle eight is Super Trouper ("So I'll be there when you arrive..."), but I think most of their songs were verse and chorus. As far as can tell, it seems pop songs with middle eights were more common in the 1950s and 60s, deploying the structure  that so many of the great popular standard songs of the 20s, 30s and 40s had.

But I was also thinking of the lack of an extended solo instrumental on piano, say, from Benny, along similar lines to George Harrison's guitar solo in 'Something', for example. But I guess Benny wasn't interested - or too modest. I would certainly like to have heard such a solo from him.