ABBA ABBA Hey!

Gold
ABBA
(Polydor, 1993)

The Christmas before the one just passed, my now-mother-in-law gave me a homemade ABBA dish towel. She found a sketch of ABBA online, traced it, and sewed it upon a plain white cloth with red thread.

I'm not certain why. I am not particularly gaga about ABBA. I mean, I don't hate 'em. "Super Trouper" and "Knowing Me Knowing You" kick much röv. I think it's my appreciation of a good novelty gift that must have made her make the thing. At work, I have inflated the ABBA dish towel into an artifact of mythic stature (we were running short on myth awhile back). I hung it up over the wall of my cubicle. Last month I took it down; a few days later my co-worker Alison asked me where it went. She missed it. I realized I had better stick the thing back up pronto. It's back up there now, a few feet to the right of where it once was. It's a slightly more exalted position; now people passing along the north corridor bordering my cube can see it more easily as they walk by. Before, you had to shuttle a bit to the left. Now my fellow employees don't even have to shift their eyes. I believe that's how ABBA would have wanted it. They were very much of the people.

(The ABBA dish towel has become so popular, I've encouraged my mother-in-law to consider starting a cottage industry making ABBA dish towels. There are people in Scandinavia who'd go nuts over 'em. I've also told her to consider going into a hobby-based business making more music dish towels, not just ABBA ones. I placed an order for an N.W.A dish towel on behalf of another of my work friends, but she still hasn't responded. Personally, I think I would be more inclined to double-wipe my china if Dre was giving me a threatening look at the sink the whole time.)

Why do we like ABBA so much when we run roughshod over groups that sound exactly like them, who emulate the same workmanlike production principles? Folks like Max Martin and Chinnichap always got the brush-off (well, not by me) for creating works resplendent with artifice and cocoa butter; how has the ABBA myth perpetuated?

The kitsch argument doesn't really hold water anymore. We got fresh sources for unintentional irony these days (thanks Nickelback!) so kitsch doesn't have the same effect on the viscera as it used to. ABBA also doesn't have that enduring image, the way Elvis does. You'd be able to tell them if you saw a picture of them, but there ain't no Swedish Mount Rushmore with Agnetha's stone face etched upon it. Their facelessness was part of the final product; the most pertinent images ABBA encourages involve abstractions. You can see the sequins and the polyester flare pants in your mind, but you don't necessarily see ABBA wearing them. They're the Headless Norsemen.

You know what I think it is? The Europe thing. ABBA represents an entire continent. On your best day, you only represent a block. But ABBA carry an entire freakin' land mass on their backs, and they got Iceland in a fanny pack. ABBA songs could not be made in America. Any Yankee recording engineer would feel compelled to have some bass player pluck a funky note in their songs. If ABBA came across one lick of funk in their efforts, one of them would keel over. Probably the blonde.

ABBA was insulated from all transatlantic cultural exchange, taking on the Wagnerian overtones of their homeland. Every song of theirs sounds like an epic human struggle on the threshold of its climax. Even if it's just going to a disco and becoming the Dancing Queen, or breaking up with a longtime partner, or whatever the hell Fernando was doing (I believe it was war-related, but what war have the Swedes ever fought?). There is grandiosity to be found in everything with ABBA. It's not "gosh, breaking up is hard to do." It's "S.O.S.!!!!!"

Makes sense. When Europe goes through some sort of evolution, chances are you're going to know about it, because they have this flair for the epic. They can't even tear down a concrete wall without Hasselhoff showing up, promising to contribute whatever he can. All the best skiing tournaments take place in Europe, usually Switzerland. If you ever wanted to stone someone, you had to book the Colosseum, otherwise you might as well be throwing pebbles at a petty thief. And does anybody remember the Philadelphia portion of Live Aid? Nope. But you sure remember Queen's set at Wembley, doncha?

The French make the definitive films, the Italians make the definitive food, the Dutch make the definitive clogs – and ABBA made the definitive music of Europe. They absorbed all the Spanish, Moor, German, Austrian influences. I think I even hear a Turk in "Chiquitita." They distilled that pan-nationalism in every piece they made. Even if they're just singing about disco dancers, they still sound like freedom fighters.

Especially in "Chiquitita." Whatever mess Chiquitita's goin' through, you can best believe when she's ready to put her head in the wood-burning stove and say the hell with her credit bills, Frida will soon enter her tattered peasant shack with about 100 members of the local philharmonic, lay her velvet hands on Chiq's shoulder, and usher her out the front door to face the bracing early morn in clear view of snow-capped peaks and the racing crisp wind of change. Wherever Frida takes her for breakfast that morning, it certainly won't be McDonald's.

Europe gets grandeur. They recognize the vastness of your landscape, and mine. While American rockers can't even see past their own miserable cigarette butts and daddy issues, Europeans got bigger lutefisk to fry. They know how to make a statement. That's why we love ABBA – there is not a hint of minimalism about them. Even when they're singing an intro over a spare, bare piano melody, that piano sounds like it belongs to the lounge singer workin' the Mesozoic shift in Valhalla.

ABBA, they so big, maybe my mom-in-law should switch to beach towels. Do Swedes swim?