ABBA (with Carl Magnus Palm)

By DJ Louie XIV

Pop Pantheon

21/04/22·1h 47m

ABBA Scholar and author of 8 (!!!!) books on ABBA, Carl Magnus Palm, joins DJ Louie for an epic deep dive into the Swedish pop legends. First, Louie and Carl discuss the history of pop and "schlager" in Sweden and how the country's musical traditions helped form ABBA's music before tracing the pre-ABBA careers of the four members, Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, through the 1960s and how the group came together in the early 1970s, both as bandmates and romantic couples. Louie and Carl then break down how the "ABBA Sound" developed from the group's early recordings and their obsession with Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" and The Beach Boys' vocal-layering, ABBA's unique international ambitions, how the glam-rock nodding, Eurovision-winning "Waterloo" changed their career, the ways they continued to refine and expand their singular aesthetic on subsequent hits like "Mamma Mia" and "SOS", the darker and more wistful lyrical themes that began to surface on mid-period hits like "Fernando", the majestic ebullience of "Dancing Queen", their canny techniques for incorporating numerous pop subgenres into their work without ever losing their essential ABBA-ness, the powerful interplay of light and dark in their work, how the dissolution of the group's two romantic couples informed their more emotionally-complex latter period hits like "The Name of the Game" and "The Winner Takes It All", how the band came apart in the early 1980s, and how their legacy has evolved and changed over the last 40 years thanks to their greatest hits album ABBA Gold and the jukebox musical and film, Mamma Mia!. Finally, Louie and Carl rank ABBA in the official Pop Pantheon.

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Check Out Louie's ABBA Essentials Playlist