ABBA Voyage: General Discussion 2019

As I've made clear in the past, I don't hold much truck with numbers. However, those figures are impressive. I've taken a bit more notice recently and spotted that some songs have over a billion views on YouTube. Marvellous, but not often anything I think to have any real quality imo. That's the thing- quality over quantity every time. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if that Gangnam Style song had millions/billions of views but it's patently rubbish.

By the way, these are pics from with me and ABBA members in those days in the eighies waiting frustrated for new music from ABBA.

I feel the same way.  When and if Queen, or any other act, supersedes the Beatles in terms of sales stats, it won't suddenly make them a more important band, because you don't measure artistic achievement and cultural impact in sales statistics or sheer popular reach alone.  The changes the Beatles wrought, within the popular music scene initially but ultimately far beyond that realm, were unprecedented and epochal (one tiny example: if the Beatles had never been, then two guys working fairly happily within the bounds of the Swedish folk scene would never have become the pop writers and performers they became, as they themselves have made clear many times).  And that's said as someone who likes and admires the Beatles' music a great deal, but who is far from being an exclusive or blinded überfan.  I think that claim about their singular significance can be made as good as objectively; it will likely never be matched, at least not for a long, long time.  That said, you also have artists who've enjoyed relatively little commercial success, but whose influence is more far-reaching than others who've shifted tonnage; e.g. the Velvet Underground, about whose first album Brian Eno famously said "[It] only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought a copy formed a band."  This almost OCD focus on sales figures mystifies me, I have to say; who sold what and where and to whom is just about the dullest aspect of music, for me.

    Some Fans are interested in Record Sales. Others are not. Both views have a right to be expressed. It is as simple as that...

    However, let us be clear about one thing. If ABBA had not sold so many Records and had 132 No.1 Singles, around the World,
    there would not be such an interest in them now. Groups who are not huge never, ever get TV Specials Decades later, or 2
    Films and a Stage Show made based on their Songs. Or have Forums like this discussing them Decades after they split up.
    Or sell 31 Million to 32 Million copies of a 'Gold' Collection. All of these things have happened because ABBA sold so many
    Records. Naturally, some of us like to write about such statistics. Other Fans are not interested in that. Which is fine, but
    we would not even be here, if ABBA had never been such a huge success...(Nor would there have been an ABBA TV Special
    shown on Australian TV, on Sunday Night - 'ABBA Forever'. All of it happens due to their huge Record Sales).

    Then there was the 'Priscilla Queen Of The Desert' Film, the 'Muriel's Wedding' Film and current Stage Musical. Plus, the 'Mamma Mia!
   - The Party' Venues in Stockholm and London. The ABBA Museum in Stockholm. The London 'ABBA Experience' that opens in London,
   in December. The Global Media interest in ABBA Recording again. Every one of those things only happened because ABBA sold Millions
   of Records. Had ABBA never been big, none of this would ever have existed...

I love all the stats stuff. But the Beatles having sold more records does not make me want to buy their records. I think they are over rated. Yes they had some good songs but they just don’t do it for me. I prefer the Mamas and Papas and the Stones from that era. Can’t believe the Beatles were fanciable too! None of them lookers. Think it would have been inevitable that if the Beatles had not broken the mould where a band wrote and performed their own songs another band would have but maybe not with the same success. Although some Abba songs have dated most still seem fresh and not as dated sounding as the Beatles songs. Each to their own I suppose.

As someone who likes both The Beatles and ABBA, I've learned to shrug my shoulders when fans of either group claim the other group was either over or underrated. To me those terms don't mean much more than saying 'My dad is better than your dad!'
The Beatles wrote and recorded some wonderfully tuneful pop songs with great harmonies. Just my opinion, of course.
Some Beatles songs sung by Agnetha and Frida - I would love to have heard that. I remember that Frida did a live version of Can't Buy Me Love on a Swedish show - around 1980?

Agreed. And the show will be no more or less successful without this "exclusive" new material. It will fascinate enough people to buy expensive tickets either way. If, as has been suggested, the show will be in just one location, two new songs will not be enough of a draw for people who would find the tickets/travel/accommodation too expensive a commitment. Release the songs already!

That depends on whether or not you have them forever pegged as the mop-tops who sang about "holding hands."  Most of us here know how frustrating it is to hear ABBA still being effectively dismissed as peddlers of Euro-kitsch, when they developed into so much more; well, that frustration for me gets sized-up many times over when the Beatles get similarly damned with similar faint praise (often by ABBA fans, for some strange reason).  The Beatles played a big part in creating the pop cultural landscape that we know and enjoy and live with, and it's sometimes hard to credit the approaches and innovations they helped bring about, since they're now taken for granted.  The speed with which they left behind their basic 'rock-skiffle' boy-meets-girl pop beginnings, to create songs that dealt with frustration, uncertainty, guilt, paranoia, rejection, regret, alienation, social issues, the search for deeper meaning, and all served up in a wide range of styles, can still make you shake your head.  The ground they covered, given the ages they were and the social class they came from, and the speed at which they covered it, given things like the technical limitations of studios they were working in, will likely never be equalled (anything in the future of similar import will have to happen in a way that most of us can't currently conceive of).  George Harrison was just twenty-six(!) when the Beatles called it a day, and the other three were under thirty; Benny and Bjorn served a far more plodding apprenticeship, and were pushing thirty before producing the first of their true stone pop classics (I take the self-titled 1975 album to be the one where they really announced themselves as a force), and by then were doing it in studios equipped with large, multi-track consoles.  Go and listen to Strawberry Fields or A Day In The Life or I Am The Walrus, and then remind yourself that the Beatles were producing music as dense and experimental and complex as that with very limited equipment (the Beach Boys were doing similarly brilliant things with the same equipment by the mid-sixties, but they'd been spurred on to go the extra experimental mile by the creative example of the Beatles, effectively 'competing' with them, as Brian Wilson has said).  Harrison going off to study with Ravi Shankar and then feeding that back into his and the others' songs; John meeting and collaborating with Yoko, an artist right in the thick of the New York Fluxus/performance art scene; Paul collecting 'kinetic art' sculptures by Takis and attending concert performances by the experimental improvising avant-garde group AMM; keeping abreast of what Stockhausen and co. were doing in at Darmstadt and at the WDR Studio; working with a renowned fashion photographer like Robert Freeman or fine artists such as Peter Blake, Jann Howarth and Richard Hamilton, to help transform the album cover into something that could be considered a work of art in itself; in the end their appetite for new and different art forms, and their openness to change and willingness to depart from the known and/or accepted paths in order to see where chance and experimentation might take them, makes them the case apart they are.

Yeah, I guess I am just not that fond of the sound The Beatles made in general. It doesn't please my ears in the same way Agnetha and Frida's voices do. I have some favourite male singers but it is the female voice I gravitate to. Paul McCartney's voice never thrilled me, or John Lennon's, for that matter.

Just as some people will always remain impervious to ABBA's charms, as I am immune to The Beatles. There's no changing my mind, anymore than I can change yours about The Winner Takes It All. And I'm not alone in that.

I'd be interested in knowing what constitutes a sale too: someone said that 100 plays equals one sale?

I've always thought The Beatles were overrated, I don't mind their solo songs though, John lennon had some good songs like "Imagine" and "So this is Christmas"
There's been Beatles fans who have a go at ABBA so that makes the hackles rise, yes we all have different tastes but it does make you angry when there are some that make rude comments about your favourite groups.

Of course you're right, Angela. We've all got our tastes and preferences and there's no need for rude comments. But it's not a one-way street from some Beatles fans.

I think the Beatles are great, so I guess I overrate them, too. 😀 But seriously, I do actually think The Beatles have become, if anything, underrated (although I don't go much on these terms, really) in some quarters in recent years, whereas ABBA have been getting more of their due - which, as an ABBA fan, I'm pleased about.

And bennybjorn, I agree: if the singer's voice doesn't appeal, that can sometimes be a big hurdle to appreciating the quality of a song.

I'm sure your response is pretty universal, Josef, and very undertandable for the vast majority of fans who love a particular artist. How many Elvis fans, I wonder, were interested in who came before him?

I think artists who inhabit the time and space before and after our favourites, especially, have a tough task getting a fair hearing from us - let alone our appreciation and possibly becoming new favourites. That was certainly the case with me with regard to the great old standard songs and singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. 

My problem s taking the time to really listen to some of today's artists!

Indeed, Richard.

I have quite a broad range of taste in music and it's not just stuck in the 1970's. My thing is very often just individual songs rather than the whole back catalogue of some artists. So, I'm familiar with and appreciate many artists from WAY back, Ella Fitzgerald being just one of them, but I also like modern music very much. It's impossible to hear it all, but I try to keep up. Having said that, I have my 'go tos' and that includes everything by Kate Bush (amongst others-I'd be here all day if I was to list them).

Edmund, a top 100 thing was created on the old forum abba4ever, and there were some amazing posts and analysis shared by fans but unfortunately it folded and there wasn't time to save anything. Such a shame as many fans went to a great deal of effort to compile their favourites listing their often heartfelt reasons. Many people, such as Pablo, posted lengthy thoughts on songs such as The Day Before You Came and Dancing Queen. Brilliantly worded, how I wish I could read their erudite thoughts once again. Oh, well.

You're right, it's a massive undertaking.