Six Degrees of ABBA Gold

It's fall 1992. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and other Seattle bands have made grunge a mainstream obsession. Before the end of the year, Dr. Dre's The Chronic would do the same for rap, and the soundtrack to The Bodyguard would make massive mainstream inroads for decidedly civilized R&B. Yet the most surprising and longest lasting success of the era hails from a quartet of Swedes who'd broken up a... decade earlier. Released without fanfare in the United States and seemingly out of sync with every other '90s trend, ABBA's greatest hits album would eventually sell over 28 million copies worldwide and rank among the 30 best-selling albums of all time.

Gold: Greatest Hits means many things to different people. To many rock fans who grew up in the '70s and early '80s, it is a reminder of what they perceived as overly slick and cheesy about the era's AM radio hits. To their children, it's boomer music they actually like. To gay men and the women who love them, unintentional queer anthems like "Dancing Queen" and "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" are guaranteed party starters as sure as "We Are Family" and "YMCA." And to tweens whose earliest musical memories are Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys, ABBA Gold is music they instantly get because its influence is encoded in the DNA of nearly every Radio Disney smash just as surely as Little Richard shaped the Beatles.

Like that other mixed-gender '70s phenomenon, Fleetwood Mac, ABBA was composed of men and women who came together both musically and romantically, and then split apart as lovers near the peak of their popularity. And although the English-as-a-second-language aspects of their early lyrics is at times laughably apparent (check "Waterloo"), Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad had by the end of their time together written and sung of love and loss with lived-in poignancy and eloquence (witness "The Winner Takes It All"). Framing simple melodies with complex harmonies and avoiding adolescent rebelliousness by treating rock guitar as one of many studio-assembled elements, ABBA managed to be simultaneously childlike and adult, innocent and knowing. ABBA Gold is quintessentially pop the way the Rolling Stones are rock; European like the Beach Boys will always be American.

Before ABBA discovered disco, the foursome hit its highest marks pursuing a glam rock variant rooted in early '60s pop. Like Roy Wood's Wizzard and the Rubettes, ABBA took its initial cues from superstar producer Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound. Approximated via overdubs and '70s studio tricks, ABBA and its session musicians created thick masses of sophisticated orchestration that further magnify the harmonic intricacies offsetting their lyrical straightforwardness.... Early singles like "Ring Ring" and "Honey Honey" follow the blueprints Spector laid on the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron" ricocheting percussion, guitars scraping like violins, saxophones honking as glockenspiel twinkles, and sweet female harmonies cooing baby talk mixed with street jive. Like ABBA's Agnetha Fltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Spector songbirds like his wife Ronnie Spector possess striking, strident, almost operatic voices, but what would ordinarily be background filigree is in both Spector and ABBA arrangements pushed to the foreground: Maracas, castanets, and a snapping snare drum might be almost as loud as the vocals. In the Ronettes' extraordinary "Walking in the Rain," claps of thunder punctuate each chorus, as if the music itself is a force of nature. In the hands of Spector and his Swedish students, pop is every bit as primal as it is polished.

During their initial melodramatic folk-pop phase, these three British brothers did not shy away from ornate arrangements. So when they transitioned into a Europeanized approximation of R&B, they, like ABBA, maintained their studio magic. The Bee Gees hooked up with Atlantic Records' veteran soul producer Arif Mardin who took them to Miami, the source of "Dancing Queen"'s rhythmic model, George McCrae's early disco hit "Rock Your Baby." And like ABBA's first... forays into dance music, this resulting transitional album was far bigger on the radio than it was in the underground clubs of 1975. But its mix of black and white sounds fit right in with disco's all-embracing urbanity, and the frisson between them became a source of creativity. Like the Swedes, Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb could never fully be funky, and their failings added to their charm. Take, for example, "Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)." Could a song title be any sillier? But like ABBA on such ditties as "Dum Dum Diddle," the brothers sing it openheartedly, seemingly oblivious to the obvious. Taking a cue from then-current R&B harmony groups like the Stylistics and Blue Magic, Barry lets loose his newly discovered falsetto. The key shifts upward once, twice, and then the ballad blasts off to the heavens like a helium balloon untied, Barry swooping and shrieking without reservation. It's simultaneously magnificent and ridiculous, and it mirrors ABBA's own bubblegum delirium.

A funny thing happened when ABBA broke up: Its influence suddenly skyrocketed. As punk transitioned into New Wave, incandescent '80s pop acts like the Human League, Bananarama and Eurythmics led a second British Invasion while in the clubs, a synth-heavy, post-disco sound known as hi-NRG picked up where ABBA's biggest and final club hits "Lay All Your Love on Me" and "The Visitors" left off. Comprised of bodacious gay singer... Andy Bell and former Depeche Mode/Yaz keyboardist Vince Clarke, Erasure bridged New Wave and hi-NRG with a nonstop hit streak, and when the duo covered four ABBA songs for its 1992 Abba-esque EP, its chart-topping European success paved the way for ABBA's commercial resurgence as it emphasized the foursome's lasting popularity with queer audiences. The latter flattered yet puzzled ABBA: What besides its drag-ready outfits and accidentally campy lyrics so endeared the group to gays? The secret lies in the intersection of Scandinavian character and gay vulnerability. In his acceptance speech at ABBA's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, Benny Andersson acknowledged life on the 59th parallel north latitude long winters, limited sunshine, and a particular sadness in Swedish folk music that's analogous to the blues. And although the nation's reputation for suicide is often exaggerated, the inclination for gay people to take their own lives is not. ABBA's melancholy is masked in delectably garish arrangements and effervescent vocal harmonies, yet gay people detect it, comprehend it, and claim it as their own. Just listen to the opening of "Dancing Queen." Beneath the Liberace piano frills is a seriously mournful melody, the kind that Erasure has for decades excelled at writing without drifting into self-righteousness. Although its homeland popularity far outstripped its US success (this anthology includes 32 UK Top 40 singles), Erasure managed to sneak gay rights themes into the American Top 20 via "Chains of Love" and "A Little Respect." In "Always," its other mainstream U.S. hit, Bell celebrates an eternal love, but his declaration is directed to a dying lover; a crucial detail that gay listeners instinctively understood at the height of the AIDS epidemic just before the recipe for virus-arresting drug cocktails was discovered. For a community struck by both bigotry and plague, ABBA and Erasure are soul music.

Straight people like ABBA too even those fronting erudite, Great American Songbook-inspired rock bands. Amalgamating jazzy Steely Dan-ish keyboard perfection and wistful, Smiths-like guitar jangle, Prefab Sprout boast the compositional chops and lyrical wit of Elvis Costello with a spiritual ache where bile and barbs would ordinarily be. On this Thomas Dolby-produced 1990 concept album, former seminary student Paddy McAloon sings of God, but cloaks him/her in metaphors Jesse... James, Elvis Presley, and ABBA's blonde goddess Agnetha Fltskog, who appears as a teenage dream of Scandinavian glamour in a sumptuous mid-album song suite. "All the World Loves Lovers" draws from the same pool of Broadway schmaltz as ABBA ballads like "Thank You For the Music" and "Chiquitita," but does so to dismiss romantic notions and yet pine for their realization. In "The Ice Maiden," Fltskog (played by fellow Sprout Wendy Smith) embodies unattainable perfection. "I think perhaps you like being unhappy," she decrees to her supplicant in a gust of frosty wind. McAloon counters with the heat of naive devotion, and their encounter yields the child "Paris Smith." He tries to teach her the virtues of dancing, but admits in the suite's conclusion that the rhythmic movement beyond his mastery is "The Wedding March." For McAloon, as well as for the doubly divorced ABBA, its steps remained a mystery. (As of late 2010, all but Fltskog are currently married.)

The first in a long line of femme teen blondes to work with Swedish hit maker extraordinare Max Martin, Stockholm's Robyn may have presaged Britney Spears and other prefab stars in the late '90s, but she soon clashed with American execs and refused to pander to the US market. Once she escaped her major label contract, Robyn created her own record company and reinvented herself as a feisty, yet personable electro-pop diva... with impeccable taste in collaborators. The resulting Robyn (as if her previous releases represented someone else) consolidates a Swedish pop legacy that stretches back to ABBA with the country's equally vital indie dance scene. Robyn's eagerness to engage a mass audience while asserting a finely defined sense of self suggests what Lady Gaga might sound like if her music was as consistently smart as her presentation. In "Handle Me," Robyn rejects the kind of wealthy playboy ABBA dissed and dismissed in "So Long," but goes several steps further in character assassination: "You're a selfish narcissistic psycho freaking bootlicking Nazi creep and you can't handle me." In "Crash and Burn Girl," she describes a self-destructive ingenue that by 2005 (Robyn was released in the US in 2008) had become a pop genre onto itself. But instead of an unqualified condemnation, Robyn ultimately acknowledges that what she finds most disturbing about this woman's bad behavior is the mirror it holds up to her own damaged psyche. Although her command of both the English language and African-American musical idioms are more finessed than ABBA's (by the 21st century, each had grown easier to assimilate), Robyn's got their Swedish melancholy in spades. Her post-breakup dancefloor ballad "With Every Heartbeat" is both an anthem of survival and a death march: Every step in the opposite direction of her incompatible beloved takes her closer to the grave.