ABBA: daring to like them

I've been recalling how easy it was to lose touch with pop culture before the age of the computer and internet, especially when working overseas, without any access to British TV (with only the BBC's World Service on the radio as a kind of indispensable news lifeline).

I'm not sure when it was that ABBA first dominated the charts in Britain. Probably after the success of "Waterloo" at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. I was completely unaware of the existence of the group for many years, as I was working in far-away Ethiopia and Kenya.

My daughter, at boarding school in Dorset, was a great fan. I remember finding out that Abba had recorded a song called "Nina, Pretty Ballerina", and as my daughter's name is Nina and she was studying ballet-dancing at the time, I bought it for her as a present. I'd already written my own song for her: "Have you seen my Nina, my Ballerina, oh, she's the Queen-a, The Queen of the Ball/The Queen of Them All!"

ABBA: a far cry from the blues music I liked, yet I grudgingly admired the group's infectious harmonies and musicality. I didn't catch up with Abba's back-catalogue until I went to work in Australia and Sweden, thanks to a compilation CD of greatest hits occasionally played on long car-journeys.

Dan Cairns wrote an article on Abba and Agneta Faltskog for the Sunday Times Culture Magazine on 12th May, 2013.  He talked to her at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm.

Agneta tells him how lonely life was at the top. Swedish people weren't happy about their success.

"I think we all felt that. I don't want to say anything bad about Sweden and Swedish people, but we have something here called svenska avundsjukan- a jealousy of people who achieve success...they didn't dare to say they liked us".

It sounds like the attitude that Aussies call "the tall Poppy syndrome". Yet it's not quite the same thing.

I'd be no good on a quiz show panel. I have two or three missing decades in terms of the history and evolution of  pop music. I'm a complete blank. The other competitors would quickly cut me down to size. But I once knew a lot about traditional Ethiopian, Luo and Greek folk music, if anyone cares to ask a question.

As for Abba? I dare to say I do quite like them.