< ABBA

ABBA/YMMV


  • Americans Hate Tingle: Not *hate* exactly but still a difference in appeal - North America: pretty successful, but just another group. Rest of the World: popularity rivaled that of the Beatles.
    • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: On the flipside, they were especially successful in Japan and Australia. Just take a look at the massive, screaming crowds in ABBA: The Movie. Ironically, "Take A Chance On Me", their second most popular song in America (after "Dancing Queen"), didn't even crack the top ten in Australia.
    • Then again, at the time ABBA was most popular worldwide, Fleetwood Mac had the prime position in the North American market, so to speak, on melodic, harmonic pop. It was pretty hard for anyone to compete against the Mac at the time of Rumours. For that matter, the parallel between the two groups in terms of couples that broke up but kept on working together is pretty eerie...
  • Angst? What Angst?: Frida
  • Broken Base: Agnetha fans vs. Frida fans. Because two women can't possibly get along with each other.
  • Cargo Ship: "Dum Dum Diddle". Some guy/violin.
  • Ear Worm: Just about every song.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: This is often the discussion when it comes to Agnetha and Frida, though the former tends to meet this more often than the latter, though she has some female admires as well.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: Any music video of the band in an automobile like "Tiger", "Money, Money, Money", and "That's Me" seems hard to watch after one considers the fact Agnetha almost was killed in a bus crash in 1983, with a minor concussion despite the force of the impact was enough to threw her into a random field.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: You need to listen to "Knowing Me, Knowing You" carefully and checked out what happens afterwards to the group.
  • Internet Backdraft: Criticism of this group is near impossible due to the fans.
  • Iron Woobie: Frida
  • Magnum Opus: Arrival and/or The Album.
  • Memetic Mutation: Keep in mind that ABBA memes are only known within the fandom.
    • ABBA: The X[1]
    • "What does kinky mean?"[2]
    • "Sweaty, obsessive fans."[3]
    • "How can I answer to that?" [4]
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Some fans blast Voulez Vous for being more disco-oriented.
  • True Art Is Angsty: Many critics who diss ABBA tend to sing praises for The Visitors.
  • Values Dissonance: "When I Kissed The Teacher" is a laid-back and cheerful look at a Teacher-Student Romance situation. Guess how that goes down nowadays.
  • Vindicated by History: The more pretentious type of rock critic (and rock fan) liked to deride Abba during their heyday as being little better than bubblegum pop; as Bjorn pointed out in a 2002 Australian interview, "for the main part of the group's lifespan, the critics despised us". These days, a lot of people appreciate the group for their musical and vocal craftsmanship, and for their innovation in the field of music video (see Trope Codifier).
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: Sure, their songs are all love-and-peace-and-some-more-love and the kids love to sing along with them. But:
    • "Honey Honey" is really about sex, so much that in the version heard in Mamma Mia!, when the lines "you do your... thing" and "you're a dog-gone beast" are sung, the singer is clearly enjoying herself.
    • "Voulez-Vous" is about a consensual one-night stand.
    • "The Winner Takes It All" is about divorce.
    • "Does Your Mother Know" is about trying to invoke the Jail Bait Wait, in the sense that a legal minor is all but throwing themselves at the singer. Very much not kid-friendly.
    • "Hey Hey Helen" is about a woman whose has recently left her husband for an unspecified reason. It is implied that he was abusive to her. Her kids miss their father, but she never wants to see him again. The song essentially is trying to help them all cheer up. This is quite a dark meaning for such an upbeat tune and it is not surprising it was just an album track.
  1. ↑ Started with The Album, then The Movie, The Folio, The Scrapbook, and nowadays there's The Forum, The Site, etc.
  2. ↑ A line spoken by Benny in the movie, used whenever someone says "kinky" for whatever reason.
  3. ↑ A general description of (usually) hardcore Agnetha fans.
  4. ↑ Agnetha's answer to Greg Evens's question when asked about her body.
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