ABBA: Classic Or Dud?

"so-called afro wigs"

American Indian costumes?

I don't think people in the UK are all that aware of the offence that might cause.

I was imagining see-through blouses or giant coke spoon necklaces.

is there a good book on Abba? seems the autoritative text is the 600p mammoth by Carl Magnus Palm but tbh it looks really boring

I read it at the time, and ‘boring’ is indeed my lasting memory of it

CMP sort of redeeming himself here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CcnrL02FG8t/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

I drunkenly theorised at the weekend that every ABBA song is secretly a short psychological horror story and I'd like to test it out with you all. Suggestions and examples welcome

There are some pretty obvious ones: Lay All Your Love On Me where someone's jealous streak becomes so terrifyingly inflated that it develops a dead-eyed numinous zombie-like religiosity

Dancing Queen. No matter who you are, YOU are the dancing queen. Against your will, you have been reduced to the object of the singer's cruel desire. This is a scene Thomas Ligotti would be proud of

One Of Us is crying. Who? Which of you? How many of you are in this smiling cabal with a single secretive cryer? One of us is lying, the other always tells the truth. I'm scared

Like An Angel Passing Through My Room. Sleep paralysis. Wonderful

Does Your Mother Know... what you did last Summer?

Haha I love this. "The Day Before You Came" if you buy the interpretation that the "You" is a guy who murders the protagonist.

My daughter was just in Mamma Mia, and as I watched I did wonder how malleable the ABBA catalog could be. Like, the musical is the most obvious, easy, literal adaptation, but a more creative mind could have gone truly nuts with the material.

People everywhere
A sense of expectation hangin' in the air
Givin' out a spark
Across the room, your eyes are glowin' in the dark

I don't know what's going on here but fuckin ell mate

Lovers Live A Little Longer - in which it turns that the protagonist is actually talking to the preserved corpse of her kidnap

E.T.A. Hoffman's "Nina, Pretty Ballerina"

Death Camp On and On and On ("people care for nothing, no respect for human rights")

The city is a nightmare, a horrible dream
Some of us will dream it forever
Look around the corner, and try not to scream
It's me

Ooh nice

Summer Night City is about a vampire that sleeps in the day and preys on people coming home from nightclubs and discos

Some folks only see the litter
We don't miss them when they're gone

That's a Paul Tremblay line if I ever heard one

I'm Carrie, not the kind of girl you'd marry,
That's me.

And I'm going to use telekinesis to take revenge on all of you after the prom.

Super Trouper – having been chased down by the authorities, the narrator is undergoing an interrogation so intense that she begins hallucinating that she is on a stage somewhere performing for her adoring fans, searching for her partner in the audience to rescue her. Alas he’s already dead. And by the end so is she.

Dum Dum Diddle – about a murderous stalker who imagines transforming into the violin of a musician she intends to kill.

These are gold. ABBA gold

(xp) Didn't Argento film that one?

“Elaine” is another great example

Someone needs to isolate the vocals on those tracks, slow them down and douse them with a ton of reverb so we can hear what the trailer will sound like.