Chart Action
By Derek Johnson - RAM 7 May 1976
ABBA’s recent promotional tour and bandstand T.V. appearances have done the
group’s sales a powerful lot of good.
This fortnight they’re comfortably resting at No.1 on both the albums and
singles charts
And it doesn’t stop there. In all, they have three albums and three singles on
the charts. And when the accountants tot up the sales achievements for groups in
Oz for the financial year 1975-1976, ABBA are going to be so far ahead of anyone
else that they’ll probably even out-total the combined sales of Led Zeppelin and
Sherbet
The question is why?
I mean ABBA are an almost totally anonymous proposition. Can you remember
anything interesting about Benny? What’s Agnetha said recently that’s fascinated
you?
In truth, all you know about the band is that they look clean and they’re all
good friends and they have a jolly good time singing their songs.
At least, this is what comes across in the film clips of the band which, after
they’d been shown on the top T.V. shows Countdown and Sound Unlimited, boosted
ABBA to top of the pops in Oz – so much so, that Channel 9 spent a fortune
importing them out here for a Bandstand special, and the Paul Dainty Corp. are
spending much moolah to bring them back later this year for concert
performances.
The point is, ABBA are the backlash, the return of washed pop. No rebelliousness
here, no challenging the status quo. ABBA make eminently normal, eminently
repeatable music and all their better moments at producing it have gone to the
top of the singles charts.
That they can produce the goods within a time span of 2-3 minutes is
indisputable. The first big hit, Waterloo
had a plunging lurching tempo and the orchestral backing, while sounding
slightly different, nevertheless sounded instantly familiar.
Honey, Honey was a straight out soft pop chant – the sort of thing
that Don Kirshner used to produce when he was guiding The Monkees in their early
career and producing hits for The Archies (the most anonymous pop group of all,
they were cartoon characters and the music was made by a series of session
musicians).
And so it goes. Mamma Mia,
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do,
Ring, Ring, and most recently
Fernando.
Ring, Ring
is back to the Don Kirshner formula, and whilst in Australia, the group seemed
fairly embarrassed that it had been released as a single.
But they have reason to be prouder of
Mamma Mia and S.O.S., both
superbly produced, concise pop songs with hooklines that seem so smooth but
which nevertheless bury themselves inside yer head.
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do and
Fernando are quirkier with I
Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
utilizing a 1940s type sax riff and
Fernando daringly fading the vocals into a swirl of castanets and piccolos.
When it comes to albums though, the group lack the ability to stretch those 2-3
minute demonstrations of memorabilia into any sort of coherent entity. The
singles are literally The Best Of ABBA.
There’s no hitherto undiscovered brilliance on the albums that hasn’t already
been on the singles charts – except maybe for
Tropical Loveland off the
ABBA album which is a neat exercise in
smoothing a reggae beat into a bouncy little choon. The
ABBA album by the way also contains
the group’s most prominent lapse into tastlessness, a cut and thrust job on the
William Tell Overture featuring Benny
on piano, called Intermezzo No.1. Pure
corn, and worst of all it sounds as if the group is serious.
Still it doesn’t seem to have affected their sales of the album overmuch. Once
the public have taken a group so much to heart, and as long as the said group
just keeps on smiling and keeps the bad moments to a minimum, the sky is the
limit. Forget raunch, be part of the jolly nice backlash.
Photo: Does this thing look like a jolly good time to you?
