Occupied Territories

Critical wisdom has it that ABBA material darkened in the late 1970s because the two couples who formed the band both split up. There’s surely a lot of truth in this—their later albums are studded with fantastic, rueful break-up songs—but I don’t necessarily want to confuse “adult” and “dark” here. ABBA songs aren’t “dark” just because of the intra-band divorces, they’re more universal than that: the sorrow in them is often a sense that the best of times, the most lived parts of life, have already, irretrievably happened. “Having the time of your life”—the chorus of “Dancing Queen” is literally and painfully felt: this is as good as it gets. In so many ABBA songs the important stuff has all happened in the past—when Chiquita was sure of herself, when Fernando crossed the Rio Grande, when the narrators of “One Of Us” or “Thank You For The Music” made the decisions they’re looking back on in the songs.

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Tom Ewing, “The History Book on the Shelf” Poptimist column (2007)

Spot-on ABBA observations, especially regarding “Dancing Queen.”