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- [00:00]
A
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical, there are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello, welcome to the New Books Network. My name is Bradley Morgan and I'm joined today by my guest, Kay Dickinson. Kay is the program convener for Creative Arts and Industries at the University of Glasgow, as well as the author of Supply Chain Cinema Producing Global Film Workers. Their latest book is Fernando, A Song by ABBA and is an installment of the single series published by Duke University Press. Kay, thanks so much for joining me today.
- [01:32]
C
Oh, you're welcome. My pleasure.
- [01:34]
B
So, to get things started, could you share with us what your book is about?
- [01:37]
C
So it's in this series like you mentioned, where we just have one single that we're dealing with, one 7 inch single, one record. And mine is Fernando by ABBA. And what I'm really trying to examine in it is in one way it's this whole. It's a song about a third world or a Latin American revolution, maybe an anti capitalist one. And on the other hand, of course, it's this mega selling single that is beloved around the world and it sort of drew on every trick in the book from 1970s capitalism to get itself out there in the world.
- [02:13]
B
So as part of the single series, the idea is to explore and analyze all the different facets of one particular song. And for Fernando, which ABBA released as a single in 1976. You reconcile this duality of the song as being one that expresses support with anti capitalism liberation struggles, but while also being a highly profitable commodity. And even though this is one of ABBA's most beloved songs, your book frames the song and its lyrics in a new light that most people never really have thought about. So with that, to get us started and to set that context, can you share with us the story that the lyrics of Fernando tell?
- [02:47]
C
Sure, yeah. I mean, there are many people that do know what the lyrics are about, but I was surprised at how few did. So, yeah, two later in life, revolutionaries reflecting on a moment of conflict, you know, hearing the sounds of an approaching enemy, and they're looking back on it with a bit of nostalgia. And then the chorus, which I can set everyone's earworms going, which is, you know, if I had to do the same again, I would. My friend Fernando. So it's a sort of a reanimation of that conviction.
- [03:21]
B
So Fernando was a wildly successful single. It sold more than 10 million copies and topped the charts in several countries and even earned ABBA their first number one in the U.S. you write that the song's success is distinct in two ways, with the first being that it signaled their capacity to prosper as a group with a narrative that stretched the confines of what we think of as like the typical global northern pop song. And the second way is that very few songs about the subject matter became so popular. What was most common for global northern pop songs at that time, and what accounted for abba's success with such a narratively different song?
- [04:00]
C
Oh, I mean, I think it's, you know, most pop songs, if you were to sort of stick them in some data analyzer, it would just come up with love. And I. And I think, you know, obviously this is love is still the topic of this song, that the love is like love of liberty, love of the land, love of the revolution. Maybe so. And I think that's something that's actually quite significant about abba, is that they really do extend what we mean by love. There are songs about loving your children, for example. So I think they're within that, you know, they're not unfamiliar in that they're talking about love. But yeah, like you said, the lyrics, if you get in closer to them, they're very unconventional. I mean, we have people like Bob Marley, obviously, that are like, you know, kind of, you know, who hasn't heard of Bob Marley, who can't sing those songs. But it's not chart pop, you know, in the same way. So I think that's what's particularly unusual about this song. Yeah, so, yeah, they're within the kind of brackets of what we expect, but also really pushing it in new directions. And then, you know, just, I'm going to say stylistically, it's a sing along chorus, you know, it's a ballad as well. It's all these things which kind of put you on. On the path to kind of global success, really.
- [05:20]
B
And the packaging and presentation of ABBA is very global Northern pop. There's a whiteness, there's a certain aesthetic that kind of transcends, but there's a journey with this song that's kind of fascinating because Fernando as a story isn't set. It's not set in Sweden, where ABBA comes from, though, when the song was originally written and recorded, it was recorded in Swedish and was meant for Frida's second solo album. But while the music added a Latin American flourish to the original, you write that it was when new English lyrics were written that Fernando could really bring to mind any number of different revolutions from that region. So could you tell us about what was happening politically throughout Latin and South America at that time to kind of make that connection?
- [06:03]
C
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, kind of in the. This is a song from 1976. So we're coming up to its 50th birthday this year. And then pretty much every year, like from the late 60s through to that moment, we have various forms of major, major uprisings in Peru and Bolivia. You know, Chile being maybe the most significant one here, where you have a socialist uprising and then a CIA coup which kind of decimates it. So that's just a lot of. Yeah, a lot of churning around of political ideals and a lot of change on the ground at that moment. And I think that's coming into very much coming into this, the ambience which ABBA are drawing on, just the everyday life of citizens of the mid-1970s.
- [06:55]
B
But it's not as if the members of ABBA were completely oblivious to all of that.
- [06:59]
C
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So to get back to your question, which was about, you know, why them writing about this? In a way. And I think it's, you know, partly it's because it was in the air, to quote the song. You know, it's its current events. And they're an incredibly eclectic band. Like, they write about all sorts of things, they use all sorts of different kind of geographical signifiers. Let's say, in their music, you hear a Greekness, a Spanishness, you hear all sorts of things going on in their music. So I think it fits in very kind of very well there. And yeah, I mean, I think they were, you know, they were responding. You know, they. It's just as alien for ABBA in some ways to like, to produce a rock and roll song which is based in a, you know, kind of an African and, you know, an African American, Black American tradition as it would be to think about Latin America. I mean, both of them are geographically not where ABBA is situated. So, you know, I think they're, you know, we could look at them as, you know, they're working with these multiple traditions at once and none of them are necessari purely, let's say, Swedish.
- [08:19]
B
Let's dive into some of the conflicts with that because, you know, many critics believe that ABBA should have taken a more countercultural stand because the majority of nations in the region had witnessed at least one popular leftist uprising. You mentioned Chile as the primary example there. What exactly did critics think Appa should have said with Fernando or just generally with their music?
- [08:41]
C
I mean, I think that, you know, the sort of upright Swedish, earnest political music scene, which was large and, you know, and influential at that point. I don't think it's about what ABBA should have done. It's about that ABBA shouldn't really exist. You know, that sort of this sort of hyper pop, commercial sounding band, you know, they were absolutely anathema to. I mean, I mean, you can see why there's a, you know, why this, of all our, you know, of everything in Swedish culture is making it big globally. But I mean, I guess my response to that is. Yeah, I get that. You know, like, who doesn't want their music to be. To have a kind of integrity when they're, you know, who are they to be singing about revolution? But if you flip that revolutions are meant to be popular, revolutions are absolutely meant to be, you know, kind of. What does it mean that someone, you know, a group of people as famous as abba, are taking on that cause? Like, isn't that in some ways the aim, you know, to popularize these uprisings? So, you know, it's about a balance between kind of. Yeah, sort of spreading the message on one hand or diluting it on the other. And I also want to, I guess to add in there that it was very, again, it was very much a kind of straight white guy response in particular countries in Western Europe and maybe a little bit of North America too, later in life. Cuba apparently always took ABBA very seriously. They thought ABBA was a band that very much epitomized a kind of ideal society, a Swedish equality and kind of a good life that would come from a sort of socialist style democracy. The Soviet Union, huge fans of abba, they know what revolution is. So, you know, and actually throughout my research, I noticed a lot of Latin Americans, like when there's some kind of online discourse, really getting excited about this song and saying, ABBA are standing for us here. This is great. So, I mean, I think this is the texture of how we deal with popular culture and popular music in relation to political struggle. Really. It's going to be an uneven, bumpy ride.
- [11:04]
B
Oh yeah. And those kind of criticisms are really consistent with just various artists and groups over the decades. U2 is an example that gets criticized for their political engagement in very similar ways. But I am fascinating a bit about that criticism because you explore in the book and you had briefly mentioned particular Swedish movement and I want to ask you about that because there's a couple figures in the book that you referenced that are part of this thing called the music movement, which is like anti commercial artistic movement against artists that they say shouldn't exist at all. And it's commonly referred to as Prague, which is different from Prague as in progressive rock. And, you know, some of these figures you mentioned are Philip Tog and Jan Granville. And the Prague movement felt it was impossible to remain neutral within a dispute that pitted commodified music against radical cultural forces. As with Fernando, how does Prague's view of capitalism factor into this critique of music like ABBA's? I know you touched upon like, this band is so large and successful, they shouldn't exist. And therefore, you know, whatever kind of market is left over from that should go to smaller or independent artists. But, you know, is that something you could just maybe tie that in for me a little bit more?
- [12:18]
C
Sure. I mean, I think, you know, again, like I said, you know, it's a, it's a very worthy endeavor, but it's very generically narrow. You know, it's a very much a sort of guitar based music. And it's, you know, I think what, what interested me when I tried to think about, well, what's missing here is, you know, actually abba's been, ABBA has very much been a driving force for queer identification, for example. So a politics of marginalization that works through, you know, many ways, sort of lots of sort of queer affiliations are about working through the debris of capitalism rather than working outside of it. Like kind of saying, okay, this is what we have to work with. Actually, it's deeply rich in how it might speak to my experience or might speak to my politics. And I think at the same time, there's a politics to ABBA that we haven't, that Prague just doesn't acknowledge at all, which is that it's profoundly attuned to a working woman's life and the kind of compromises that women in a band as successful as ABBA had to make in order to also maintain a kind of reproductive labor role, to be mothers, to take care of their children in the way they wanted to, while still being very successful musicians. So I think, you know, to denigrate pop, which is kind of what prog does, takes completely dismisses that. Well, I mean, it happened later, so we're being anachronistic here. But the fact that, you know, kind of the love of pop became very central to sort of queer identity politics, and that the pop that ABBA were producing, which is heavily studio, you know, kind of based, as opposed to touring based, is all about staying at home, staying near your family, not going on tour, not getting involved in all the excesses of, like, you know, think about what the Rolling Stones maybe were up to at that moment. It's a very different understanding of gender. So, I mean, I don't have any, you know, any problem with their attitude to abba, the prog movement, but I also think that there's a lot that gets missed out there because they're looking at it from a very particular lens of politics.
- [14:39]
B
Well, let's touch upon that in terms of the gender, because not only does your book give context for this criticism of ABBA's music, but you also explore the counterpoint to Prague. And you reference Elizabeth Vincentelli's view that Fermando makes fun of earnest political folk. And as you know, there's not a lot of scholarly work dedicated to ABBA's music. So you already kind of touched about this with the gender element. But just to kind of hone it in a little bit further, what's your take on there being these conflicting viewpoints regarding their music? Like, what's really driving that?
- [15:10]
C
Yeah, I think it's great. I mean, I think a lot of it is. I mean, I think it's really like a shame. And. Yeah, no, it's ridiculous that abba, the third great largest selling band in kind of recorded history of this kind of music, haven't had the scholarship that they deserve. Whether or not you like them, it's not about liking them, it's about their prominence in the world. There's a whole journal dedicated to the Beatles. You know, think of all the books and everything that's dedicated to Elvis. So I'm really, you know, I think partly the conflict I welcome. I think it's really great. That shows there's a debate happening. But it's funny how gendered it is again, you know, that. That women will support abba, gay men will support abba and a sort of a certain group of kind of straight rock style critics, slash academics are a little more wary and don't feel that it's a serious enough topic.
- [16:16]
B
So I really appreciate you going through that context because it gets really interesting in your book. And so with it, I do want to shift gears to the song itself, because you write about the song and there's a lot to be written about about the song, including the production. And you cover in the book that Frida was a shrewd choice as a lead vocalist because she has this impressive technical precision and this aptitude for creating drama in the narrative with her voice. However, one of the song's most definitive qualities is that flute sound. And you write that the multi tracking of the flute brings out this particular resonance to the song's theme. How so?
- [16:51]
C
Oh, well. Well, firstly, it's a. You know, it sounds absolutely like it's from the Andes. So, you know, it's exactly the kind of, you know, the music that Chileans would have, you know, not just Chileans, you know, but all the countries along the Andes range, you know, kind of considered to be their indigenous folk music one way or another. It is a music that would have been heard in Europe precisely because of waves of migration, some of them caused by these very revolutions and counter revolutions that we've already discussed, of musicians that find themselves in Europe either just for financial reasons or, like I say, fleeing absolutely in flight from persecution. So there's all sorts of touring bands at that moment that are playing those musical instruments, but probably in a more kind of inclusive, eclectic way, just drawing on a whole range of different musics from around Latin America. Which brings us back to the sort of sense of, like, where actually is Fernando set? Where it's like, if you were to go to see a band in the 60s performing, you know, kind of Latin American music across Europe, you'd have heard tango at the same time as this. You'd have heard, you know, you'd have heard just this sort of quite lovely mishmash of different musics. And that probably would have spoken to the fact that the. The musicians in the group came from different countries themselves. What does it mean? What does the Cana flute mean other than to give it that anchor, that kind of locational kind of marker, but also a dispersal when it gets to Europe. It's also a music of, you know, it's a profoundly group and a profoundly communal music. In the Andes, you know, you're not a soloist on that instrument. You are joining in to produce a community sound and with incredibly powerful and resonant one that speaks to who you are, where you are, how you connect with other human beings. So the fact of it being multi tracked, I think is bringing that dimension in rather beautifully.
- [19:07]
B
Geography plays a really interesting role throughout the book. I mean, not just with the members of the bands themselves and the narrative of the songs themselves, but. But I get interested in this idea about all the different pastiches and mishmashes of sounds and ideas. And where exactly does that come through? Sometimes it may come from a place of. Of being ill informed or just of a product of their time. So with that I want to ask, because Bjorn was the member of the group who wrote the lyrics, and he said of Fernando that he got this vision in his head about two old revolutionaries in Mexico reminiscing outside one night round of a campfire. And this origin of the song brings to mind something you write, which is that European audiences throughout the 20th century typically received Latin American music as a composited hodgepodge. I can imagine that Americans would view a lot of, you know, European sounds in a very similar way. As an example, could you tell us more about that European view of Latin American music and how that inspired Bjorn to write a song about Mexican revolutionaries that had these pastiches that went beyond Mexican culture.
- [20:10]
C
Yeah, so it's, you know, it's a very hard song to place. It sounds way further south than Mexico in terms of the Cana sound, but it also sounds European. You know, it's got a schlager kind of vibe to it too. So it's. Oh, that was such an intense question. I'm trying to think how to answer it. In one ways it does. It follows through it. It's very much inspired by the kind of live Latin American music that Europeans were listening to. But we also need to think about, and particularly in later years with the rise of things like quote, unquote, world music, is it appropriation? Is it. I mean, there's some great studies of Paul Simon basically ripping off El Condo Pasa, you know, and rightfully so. We should be indignant about somebody that's actually claiming like Songwriting credits for a very well established folk song of the Andes. He added a few sort of lyrics over the top, but it's not his song in the slightest. And what I'm trying to do with the book is position that sense of appropriation in a broader kind of context and narrative of expropriation of raw materials from Latin America. So at the same time, where does the vinyl come from? Where does the copper that we need for kind of at most of our kind of electronic equipment through which we listen to music? The book is really looking at a kind of materialist history of theft of natural resources from the majority world. And then, yeah, like you say, at this point we get to, well, is the music stolen in this way as well? And what's unusual, I'm not Mexican. I'm not going to, you know, it's not up to me to call ABBA out for this or Chilean. But what was really interesting and what I found in everyone's responses is just a love of the song and an affection for it and a grat. Not gratitude's the wrong word, but a pleasure that ABBA were taking on this theme musically and politically and not kind of like, hey, what the hell are you doing wearing a. A beautiful embroidered Mexican style peasant shirt, for example? And like I say, it's not up to me to make those decisions. But it was interesting to see that. And I think it's in large part it's because they're not from the U.S. they're not from Spain, they're not from a colonizing nation. So maybe that's got something to do with why there's a sort of affection for the connection as opposed to a hey, get off our territory, who do you think you are? Kind of response. I mean, maybe, you know, and history changes things. Maybe one day there'll be a campaign against ABBA for doing that. And we'll, we'll go, yeah, we kind of knew.
- [23:12]
B
So to connect with that further, you make this really interesting point in the book that while critics mistrusted abba's political integrity, no one has since asked why they were play acting as Mexican revolutionaries. And you touched upon, you know, certain ideas about appropriation. And in the book you talk about you're not going to downplay music's culpability in exploitation and theft. Why do you think that issue hasn't been adequately addressed with abba? And how would you like to see it addressed more broadly?
- [23:40]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, just, just to reiterate what I've said, it's it's, it's. Firstly, it's not my call. It would be the call of the people who might feel, you know, kind of appropriated in that situation. But I. I genuinely think it is to do with it being a different power dynamic. Although Sweden's obviously a much richer country than some of the countries that get referenced in their work, they're still not. They're not sort of an imperial force. They're not a dominant force in music even at that point. They're quite an anomaly. So, you know, in many senses, ABBA sort of, you know, could be taken up as champions of the small nation that can still, you know, kind of punch its weight on a global stage. And I think there's an element of that to it. And yeah, I mean, also, they took significant lengths to honor and to speak to and to perform for in their own way, what, quote unquote, peripheral markets, which aren't peripheral. That's why abba. So, you know, that's how ABBA have kind of made their money. Like they recorded, you know, a whole album in Spanish, in Latin American, you know, dialect Spanish, you know, including this Spanish version of Fernando. You know, they really did, you know, kind of go the extra mile to engage with these audiences in ways that actually the other big, like did Elvis, did the Beatles, you know, what's their connection to Latin America? So I think there's a fondness that comes from that as well.
- [25:21]
B
Yeah, I'm really glad you mentioned that Spanish language album because when we were discussing Prague a bit earlier, Philip Tog was mentioned it and he's one of the leaders of that music movement and he observed that when the lyrics for Fernando were changed to Spanish for that album, 1980s, Gracias por la Musica, he noted that the lyrics changed the tone. Is that something that is being projected from his own particular perspective as part of this music movement, or is there something more to it than that? Could you tell us more about that?
- [25:55]
C
Definitely. No, no, he's completely right. I mean, I salute him. He pointed me in that direction. I had a look at the lyrics and yeah, they removed, you know, they removed all references to armed violence, basically. So the rifle in your hand kind of talk that there is within the song gets kind of replaced by softer, more peace oriented understandings of liberty. And it's just, it's absolutely, you know, it's very justifiable. The Argentinian dirty war was just kicking into its stride at that point. You probably didn't want to be listening to music that was about picking up a rifle and shooting, you know, whoever's in power. So, yeah, I guess there was a play there to what America. What would play on the radio, for sure, but also what people would feel comfortable kind of listening to at home and owning in a moment where people were justifiably growing more and more paranoid about, you know, actual threats to their lives through how they conducted themselves in the world.
- [27:04]
B
So as your book considers this larger global crises behind the theme of Fernando, you write that the song offers itself up as this ode to freedom just more generally and perhaps even the freedoms asserted as the benefit of economic liberalism. You know, certainly when we're talking about a European nation as opposed to the South American nations, those are really huge factors that we have to take into consideration. Does ABBA's commercial success factor into that or is there something more inherent within the music that speaks to those values?
- [27:35]
C
Ooh, I mean, I think, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think it was very smart or I don't know if it was calculated or otherwise that it's largely about freedom. You know, it doesn't mention colonization or any of these things. Even though, like, if we, if we are going back to the Mexican revolutionaries, we're talking about, you know, land reform, we're talking about, you know, radical kinds of redistributions of wealth. But the song itself is liberty, freedom. And like, you know, a right wing American is gonna go for that as well. It's a very shrewd kind of set of lyrics that allow for that. And yeah, I think the song structurally and aesthetically plays with that too. It's a, you know, the chorus resolves in a very satisfying way. It's a song about togetherness that's also, you know, kind of embellished with its studio production in a way that sort of plays to that togetherness and group, you know, it's very, very multi tracked. You have layer upon layer of the same thing sounding, you know, kind of joining together. It's, you know, it's got that sort of rousing chorus. It's. Yeah. And it's also nostalgic. So that sort of softens things but makes them feel very heartfelt.
- [28:55]
B
So, yeah, you briefly touched upon this earlier, but ABBA experienced two revivals throughout their career amongst marginalized groups. The first by gay men and the second by women. And both these revivals were happening in the early to mid-90s. And as an example with the first among the gay community, the English synth pop band Erasure released this EP featuring covers of four ABBA songs that became really popular. Could you tell us More about that appreciation for ABBA's music in gay clubs at that time and how that propelled ABBA further into their legacy. Having not released an album in more than a decade at that point.
- [29:33]
C
Definitely, yeah. And I think it was, you know, as is often the case, gay men were the vanguards of a new understanding of music. It's got all the things which, you know, kind of. It checks all the boxes for, you know, that are very much appreciated within queer subcultures. So, you know, these are songs of kind of melancholic uplift. They sound very poppy and up tempo and happy. But if you actually listen to them, they're incredibly fragile and broken and depressed and, you know, so that sort of sense of hiding in the light of not being able to express yourself, of having to put on a facade of joyfulness when actually you're highly conflicted, all of these things resonate clearly with the gay community. I spend a lot of time in the book talking about how the production kind of figures as queer. Which is probably one of my favorite sort of engrossments with the song, is thinking about how, you know, it creates an artificial mess, which is also, like, isn't sort of snide or removed or cynical. You know, it's incredibly. Yeah, it has a real kind of honesty to it and integrity and at the same time, it has a very high sheen to it. So I think those things do well within these markets. And, you know, it doesn't help. That doesn't. Sorry. It doesn't hinder the song's kind of queerness as it moves into the last few decades that, you know, Cher is the person that performs the number in Mamma Mia. Here We Go Again, the sequel to the, you know, to the highly successful stage musical and then film. And then, you know, there's a homosociality to the band as well. They're super, super straight. You know, they're two couples. That's quite unusual in a ban. And yet, you know, it's the guys that go off together and write the songs. It's the women who, you know, the imagery of them in the videos looks a lot like Persona, the film by Ingmar Bergman, you know, which is absolutely about like a kind of queer female identity, which sort of where you lose yourself in another woman. So there's all these, you know, it's almost funny how straight they seem in a way. They seem very suburban and wholesome and, you know, they were adults and accomplished musicians by the time they became that famous. So they weren't kind of. They played well to kind of family audiences and that so they feel very heterosexual and very heteronormative, but at the same time they have this sort of undercurrent that's, you know, it does call out to a queer community for sure.
- [32:28]
B
I'm glad you mentioned that homosocial aspect of abba, because another cultural milestone you discuss in the book related to this revival of ABBA's music within the gay community was the film the Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which was a critical and commercial success. And you write in the book that ABBA, as individuals, as heterosexual partners with each other, you know, they didn't present as gay, but they did have this homosocial relationship. How did that dynamic help grow acceptance of gay culture more broadly during the 90s?
- [32:59]
C
Ooh. Oh, I don't even know. That would be a question for a historian of, of gay culture. I mean, I'm not, I, I wouldn't necessarily say that it would have had a, like a, you know, kind of all of a sudden we're accepting, you know, our gay family members because, because abba's involved. But, you know, I just think the sort of just a, a greater acceptance of, of gay storylines in films. And that's very, you know, kind of aber. Essential to that in that particular movie. Like, it's not just that they're playing a few songs, it's that, you know, kind of the very, you know, absolutely the end of the film, the denouement is a gay club where a very sort of queer family that's, you know, kind of the father's decided, you know, kind of that he can't maintain a sort of facade of straightness anymore and is now a, you know, kind of performer in these clubs and his family show up and everyone's kind of brought to together in this very warm way and they're lip syncing to abba. So it's a good common ground moving.
- [34:06]
B
From one revival to the other. The revival of ABBA's music driven by women, you write, began with the 1994 film Muriel's Wedding, which is a great movie and I just, I just love it so much, you know, you're, you're terrible. Muriel. The film went to great lengths to attract female audiences that were presumed to be majority straighted. And in the film, the framing of Fernando and these new women oriented takes of ABBA's music were meant to foster a renewed appreciation of the group's technical prowess and drive as a band. Could you tell us how that comes through in the film? Itself.
- [34:42]
C
Ooh, it's a funny one because, you know, obviously the character of Muriel is sort of. There's a lot of mistakes she makes and there's, you know, she's an underdog, for sure. So that sort of sense of technical prowess or, you know, skill is very much at odds with how Frieda and Anyetta are, you know, when they're at the top of their game as musicians. But at the same time, you know, it's a film about female friendship. And that's, you know, kind of. That's absolutely underscored throughout, you know, throughout the movie by ABBA tracks, by them singing ABBA together. There's a point at which Muriel says, you know, my life's as good as an ABBA song now, which is, you know, speaks to the joy. I always kind of like, shrink a little at that because I think actually ABBA's songs are really dark. But she's, you know, she's talking about a joyfulness that is created by two women singing together, ultimately. Two women who have very much forged a, you know, very much part of the studio production, very much part of, you know, Connors designing the sound of abba. And I think, you know, that can only kind of re. Emphasize a film which is like, so few about genuine, you know, kind of affection between two women.
- [36:05]
B
After Muriel's wedding, the other thing that really drove the popularity for the group among women was Mamma Mia. Which has been this hugely successful Broadway show for 25 years. And there's two feature films. The first one, and then Here We Go again, that you had mentioned. And you write that by threading its own appeal across the generations, ABBA has preserved a much more stable audience than most bands, and it's been since Mamma Mio and that they've deliberately engineered this broad fan base. Can you tell us more about that kind of crafting and engineering this following? Because, again, I think it's really remarkable that you can have a group that hasn't put out. Well, they had that Voyage album that came out a couple years ago. Yeah. But prior to that, over 40 years between album releases. I mean, that doesn't come out. There's something in the music that speaks to this popular consciousness across generations and even across genders who have different priorities amongst those generations.
- [37:01]
C
Definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, I mean, I think the, you know, one of the, let's say, a strategic aim of the, you know, of the script, you know, the play of Mamma Mia originally was, you know, to make it very female focused to Deliberately create characters that represent different women at different stages and at different politics in their lives. So, you know, maybe the key character here is Sophie, the young woman who's, you know, like, romantic, and she wants a. You know, she wants a wedding, and she's, you know, quite traditional in this sense. And then her mother is, you know, somebody that's, you know, kind of had a, you know, wild holiday and then sort of settled on a Greek island. She doesn't know who. Who Sophie's father is, you know, very different kind of sort of earlier 20th century version of, you know, female agency. And then, you know, the sequel brings in Cher as Ruby, who's this like kind of almost, you know, quote unquote, negligent mother who's gone off and been a, you know, a working musician and as sort of maybe, you know, kind of to the detriment of the feelings that her daughter and granddaughter might have about her. So there's something for everyone. And I think that was specifically cast into the film. I mean, sorry, the play originally. But, yeah, it does some clever stuff there. It brings, you know, it brings the lyrics into. You know, there are. I've Been Waiting for your, for example, is about, you know, is positioned as a song about childbirth. You know, there are all sorts of ways in which they're angled to bring in these different audiences. And it's so smart, right, that, you know, instead of thinking, oh, abba's what my mum listens to, or, you know, it's like old people's music, they've really kind of amped up how they might be considered classic. And, you know, I think a jukebox musical's great for that. It's like, it plays on a. You know, they're everywhere now, right? You can't go to a theater district in the world without there being, you know, kind of. Of like a zillion different jukebox musicals. But they were early in that game, and it was, again, a very clever move to kind of just kickstart again, that whole songbook, that whole repertoire of music that, like you said, hadn't been, you know, hadn't charted in decades.
- [39:33]
B
So to connect our discussion about ABBA's popularity from earlier in this commercial success with these larger global issues you address throughout the book, there's a very compelling point you make, which is that songs delivered in English have a disproportionately larger presence on music charts in countries where English is not the primary language. And. And I guess this question is more broad, broader than ABBA specifically, but could you share with us what accounts for that?
- [39:59]
C
Oh, again, I, I'm not an expert in kind of popular music's linguistic heritages, but you know, you know, we're speaking in a dominant world language and you know, it's something that people are eager to learn. So pop music is one of many, you know, the amount of people you will meet who will say, yeah, I learned popular music, I learned through popular music, amongst other things. But also, you know, the absolute, you know, unrelenting success of like the US and to a certain smaller extent the British music industry over the years has, has reinforced that for sure. I'm very happy that these days actually there will be. We are hearing things in Spanish from Latinx performers. We're getting mega hits that are not in English now. But think about how even K pop will be delivered in English. So it's still there. And ABBA did their best, I think, to, to work their way into that particular demand from the world.
- [41:07]
B
It's just really fascinating to me how language can have that kind of power because I've read from other people there's a comedian named Jimmy O. Yang who wrote a book where he had an essay about how rap music helped him to teach English and then he had to kind of unlearn a lot of the social and cultural rules surrounding rap music. And so that just is very kind of, just fascinating to me in general and how that kind of proliferates. And you know, this huge reason why ABBA has been success so successful globally is because they recorded songs in English, which there was a point that helped their career with this, because from the very beginning, when Eurovision changed its rules the year before ABBA one before, you had the rules where you had to stipulated that you had to perform the, the music in your native language. And that's no longer the case. But there was a point in their career where their manager demanded that the group have this, have excellent English speaking skills. And so you, you touched upon this a little bit briefly in some of your early responses, but I have a particular angle with this. How does the proficiency in English reflect some of the deeper critiques and criticisms of ABBA's music? You know, we talked a lot about the ideas of, you know, talking about these South American pastiches or, or, or what have you, but with that focus on English, what's the spec like, how does that reflect that criticism?
- [42:35]
C
I mean, I don't forget that they also, you know, they recorded in Spanish too. So they're, you know, they are more than anyone of their scale who don't speak Spanish as a. As a sort of first or a fluent language. They are making that effort. And it, you know, I think it comes from the fact that they're also. They're singing in a foreign language from the get go. They're very fluent in it. And I think this goes beyond just Stig Anderson and demanding that it's. His office staff all had to speak English. And that was predominantly so that they could make licensing agreements quickly and work through contracts and just basically be operating in the global language. The global language definitely of commercial, you know, popular music, but, you know, ultimately it's, you know, it's been Swedish policy for a long time to acknowledge that they are. They have a small population. The way they're going to succeed in the world is to be looking outwards to the world, to be able to sort of trade with and commune with, you know, the world. And unfortunately, you know, that's. Especially in the 70s, that was through English. And I think what, you know, yeah, we can. There are critiques of ABE using English, but they tend to be like, oh, their English was a bit stilted, or it was a little bit kind of grammatically incorrect. And actually, you know, what I found when I read appreciations of ABBA from the global majority was that people were like, yeah, that's how all our English is. When we hear abba, we hear our own English as opposed to. To somebody hyper fluent, like, I don't know, Leonard Cohen or people that really, really kind of. Or Bob Dylan, people that really know how to use English in a particularly literary way, perhaps. So I think their imperfection in English is part of their appeal. I don't know. I'm not actually sure that they ever got criticised for singing in English, particularly.
- [44:43]
B
Yeah, you know, the funny thing about a lot of this commentary about them speaking English is that. And even your notes about how people who listen to them where English is not their primary language and they say that they speak English like they speak English. I have a partner who's. Who English is not their primary language. And whenever I get asked by her about, you know, how well her English is, honestly, she sounds better than a lot of Americans already do. So, you know, it's just. That's just a point of fascination for me and it's something that you explore in your book that's just really fascinating. And I just have this one more question about them singing in English because it's just so central to so many ideas in the book that with regards to ABBA singing in English, there are two qualities within Fernando that you identify as being equally foundational to the song's character and which has powered the global success of it, and these are their unaccentedness as well as their almost overweening simplicity. Could you tell us about what defines those qualities?
- [45:43]
C
Sure. And I'm gonna give props to Pankaj Mishra, whose words those actually are. I just quoted them in that. But I mean, I think the unaccented. And I do. I mean, I very much run with that. That understanding of abba. So I think the unaccentedness means that you can't place them so easily. Like, you know, when you hear, you know, an American band or an Irish band say, you know, you hear that accent, and you can immediately know that it comes from this very particular tradition, and that's the dominant way of speaking English. But because they're not British or they're not us or they're not Irish or whatever, they belong. I think they belong more to the world, at least that, you know that. And they're, you know, they match that even more so with their musical eclecticism, with their sort of roaming around with different genres from different parts of the world. The simplicity, I mean, again, I take a little bit of umbrage with that because I think ABBA's lyrics just get more and more sophisticated, and they're very, very like. Also, the way they scan as well as what they mean is very much in tune. But the simplicity, there's an unquestionable simplicity in the way that they kind of think about the hookiness of English. So they'll pick, you know, let's think of song titles like Fernando. You all know what Fernando means. It's a name. You don't need to kind of look it up in the dictionary. Like, what's this song about? You know, the name ABBA has no meaning. It's just their first names. Sos. Like, you understand what SOS means in a zillion different languages. So I think that that's when Mishra's talking about simplicity. I think it's more in that sense, not. Not that they were kind of two dimensional with their English, but that they really went for the heart of what connects immediately, what makes sense. And I think you need to not feel fluent, actually, to pick those things. Right. You need to be a learner of English rather than somebody born into it to kind of go, oh, yeah, SOS means the same in my language. So I don't need to think about it. I don't need to look it up. I Don't need to ask a friend what it means. It's is just sos.
- [48:03]
B
You know, it's interesting because I don't necessarily see it as simplicity as. But rather more of a directness that it cuts out a lot of the ornament in things that maybe someone who English is a primary language for them that might get lost in translation a lot of ways. And so even when I find myself speaking with people who English is in their first language, I find myself being more direct and kind of narrowing down to what is the most clear and concise kind of point. And perhaps that's what really speaks to why ABBA is so broadly beloved, is that there's just kind of this core idea or feeling that is universally felt that is just being shared in this way that could be best understood on a larger scale.
- [48:49]
C
Definitely. And then with that, a real plethora of broadly understood kind of experiences. So, you know, there's a lot of divorce, for example, in ABBA songs, which is not very common, apart from in country, let's say. It's not very common to have that fame. You know, there's, like I said earlier, love of children and care for your own children, for example. These things are hugely universal. And I think that directness that, yeah, you picked the right word there, you know, the directness of it kind of connects in a very successful way with this sense of what do people care about? What's meaningful in the world? And one of those things to go back to, Fernando, is freedom is liberty is equality. So no surprise that it should be such a global hit, really.
- [49:41]
B
And the music's fun, it just bops. It's just really great to listen to. And you just feel in a really, you know, great mood listening to it. And so, you know, thank you for writing the book because it's really incredibly fascinating. So I just want to close off with just one more question to kind of tie in all these different global and social ideas together, because your book opens with a particular story that I think kind of encompasses a lot of the broader topics that we were talking about. So the books within the single series are fairly short, and there is certainly no shortage of fascinating ideas that you present, and I wish we had time to discuss them all. But that story you tell, you write that it's safe to presume that many ABBA fans became familiar with their music through the black market. And that was certainly the case for you and your discovery of abba. Could you share with us how you discovered ABBA for yourself?
- [50:33]
C
Definitely. I mean, actually it wasn't my first encounter with ABBA was I had the mumps and the babysitter who was sort of caring about me. I mean, she was there, she was quarantined away from me at that point. But she sort of sent through an ABBA album. And I think it's because she was a teenager and she'd grown up with it. Now, where I am in the world at this point is not the uk, which is where you'd place me from my voice, but I was living in Egypt at that time. And, yeah, my second ABBA album I bought in the middle of a desert, literally, on a road between Alexandria and Cairo at a really small little pet stop where you might stop to get a drink or whatever. And there, amongst the small amount of things on sale was a cassette of Voulez Vous. And I think really, abba, ABBA did their very, very best to make money from the fact that there was somebody in Egypt who. I mean, I went and saw Abba, the movie, for example, around that time as well. And obviously ABBA would have. Have gained some kind of money from that, from kind of ticket sales, but they did their best to sort of constantly capitalize on it. And there's a large section in the book where I think about what was happening behind the Iron Curtain and how they made more money that way. But at the same time, all of those efforts meant that they were bootlegged. It was kind of simultaneously, and that is the way of the majority world as well. I'm not sure what the distribution to the official distribution of their sales would have of their albums would have been in Egypt in the 1970s, but I'm pretty sure that many, many more of us bought the bootlegs than that. So. Yeah, and I think that's just the way of the world. That's how music circulates. But the way they promoted themselves just got us seeing them, got them on our radar in these places. I've read stuff from Burundi, from Vietnam, from. There are very few countries in the world that didn't have a particular relationship to ABBA that was very strong and very populous. So, yeah, it's good to acknowledge that it was official and unofficial at one and the same time.
- [53:06]
B
Well, Kay, thanks so much for speaking with me today. Your book is an incredibly fascinating global analysis that I really appreciate it for adding whole new dimensions to a song that we thought we already knew. And you should be incredibly proud for that.
- [53:19]
C
Thank you so much. It's a real joy to talk to, well, anyone about your own scholarship as you know. But, like, yeah, these have been really great questions. And thank you for, you know, taking ABBA seriously, which I feel is one of the missions of the book. It's really, you know, like, whether or not you like them, and I do love them, and you obviously appreciate them as well. They've done some incredible things. And it's time that scholars and interested people around the world kind of began to take that seriously as something to think about.
- [53:53]
B
My name is Bradley Morgan, and you've been listening to new books of music with Mike Gascoigne, Kay Dickinson. Their latest book is Fernando, a song by ABBA and is an installment of the single series published by Duke University Press.