“Abba’s success is more about us than them”: Giles Smith looks back at a 50-year love affair

Giles was 12 when he watched Abba win Eurovision in 1974 and was instantly besotted – and thus required to spend the next 20 years wrestling with The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. His thunderingly funny, fond and illuminating book – My My!: Abba Through The Years – traces their story, looks at the snobbery and critical mauling they endured and figures out how they made records so universally popular and which still move him to tears 50 years later. It’s also the best example of any book we’ve read that can explain the mechanics of music to a non-musician. It’s highly recommended, as is this podcast which alights upon … … a 50 year-old story – “for 42 of which they haven’t existed”. .. the vicious early press reaction - “calculatingly commercial”, “dispassionate” … … the divine clunkiness of their early TV appearances. … the sense of the melancholy we’ve attached to their music - and why. ... the immense value of splitting up early and never reforming or publicly falling out.   … the immaculate construction of Dancing Queen (which opens with the second half of the chorus) and why “there are two types of wedding disco – ones that start with Dancing Queen and terrible ones.” … the maturity of Abba’s lyrics – about marriages, relationships, children and other subjects pop music rarely tackles. … why Abba Voyage is so affecting that he’s seen it three times. … and Muriel’s Wedding, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and other key factors in The Comeback. Order Giles Smith’s My My!: Abba Through The Ages here …https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-ABBA-Through-Ages-ebook/dp/B0CF73GNN4Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience. Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.