FEATURE:
How Could Anyone Be So Lonely?
ABBA's Super Trouper at Forty-Five
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3rd November, 1980, we are about to mark forty-five years of ABBA’s Super Trouper. The band’s seventh studio album, they would follow it with 1981’s The Visitors. That was their final album until 2021’s phenomenal Voyage. I do wonder if ABBA will follow their most recent album. One of their members, Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad, turns eighty on 15th November, so there will be new reason to celebrate. I want to focus on Super Trouper because its iconic title track also turns forty-five on 3rd November. Perhaps my favourite ABBA song – though Voulez-Vous is up there too! -, it is one of several standout tracks from ABBA’s masterpiece. One that includes one of ABBA’s best, The Winner Takes It All. I am going to get to some reviews of the album. Some retrospection inspection. Reaching number one in multiple countries, including the U.K. and their native Sweden, I do wonder if many will assess and revisit the album on its forty-fifth anniversary. Earlier this year, Classic Pop dug deep into an album that is a unanimous band favourite. One that is fully formed, ABBA put aside their differences (for now) to deliver a timeless album:
“Although ABBA’s sixth studio album took its name from the giant spotlight that glared on the band during their live shows, the four members of the group revealed themselves to be super troopers of a different kind, soldiering on through the catastrophic turmoil that was their personal lives to produce their most accomplished album to date.
While Agnetha and Björn had put on an amicable front when announcing their divorce in 1979, the fact that Björn had met his new partner within a week of his split from Agnetha strained their professional relationship considerably. Also, though unbeknown to the public at the time, Benny had also met a new woman, thus signalling the end of his marriage to Frida.
Therefore, at the dawning of the 80s, ABBA was a very different entity to the fun foursome in flamboyant fashions that captivated the world with their infectious Scandi-pop. On Super Trouper, they emerged, battle scars on display, with an album as rich with emotional depth as it is in complex harmonies – the confessional lyrics testament to Björn’s grasp of the English language and his flair for storytelling.
As initial sessions for the album took place in January 1980, Benny and Björn found themselves struggling to write for the new album. As this was the same predicament they had found themselves in with Voulez-Vous, they once again decided a visit to sunnier climes could help to get their creative juices flowing (not to mention a break from the tensions of their home lives) and headed for Barbados.
The trip was short lived, lasting only 10 days, but was a success, in that it resulted in them having written the first two songs for the album, Happy New Year and On And On And On, the former stemming from the idea of writing a musical that they were still toying with.
Feeling they had made progress with the album, they divided their time in the cottage in Viggsö and in their Polar Studio in Stockholm, penning songs for the album.
With half of an album’s-worth of material written, the band completed a tour of Japan in March (which would be their last), before returning to work on the LP in earnest at the end of May.
As work continued, and Benny and Björn felt that the record was taking shape, they revisited a few older ideas they had recorded and, during one particularly fruitful session, came up with the song that became the centrepiece of the album and would be recognised in the fullness of time as ABBA’s masterpiece.
The Winner Takes It All was released as the first single from the album in July 1980 and is an obvious standout. With a visceral lyric about a couple’s divorce delivered with heartbreaking feeling by the person the track was written about, the track is one of those instances which transcends the boundaries of being a throwaway pop song.
As an emotionally spent Agnetha opines the breakdown of her marriage, the song covers the stages of a broken relationship such as denial, shock, wistfulness and self-punishment, asking her ex questions she doesn’t want the answers to, such as: “Does she kiss like I used to kiss you?/Does it feel the same when she calls your name?”
Although Björn has insisted that The Winner Takes It All is not strictly autobiographical about his divorce from Agnetha, in the sense of there being a winner and a loser, the raw, emotional lyrics can only be a subliminal release. He admitted that once the backing track was complete, the song is one the quickest he’d ever written, with the lyrics pouring out of him.
Aside from the lyrics and Agnetha’s delivery, bathed in choral backing vocals and Benny’s simple cascading piano line, the song is notable for its unusual structure, something ABBA had become masters at ever since their biggest hit, Dancing Queen (which begins halfway through the chorus), taught the pair that there are no rules when it comes to writing timeless pop songs.
The Winner Takes It All is by no means the only song on Super Trouper to explore the pain of the breakdown of relationships. As affecting a song, if not so raw, Our Last Summer finds the wistful Frida of Knowing Me, Knowing You reflecting on a summer spent in Paris, reminiscing of “Walks along the Seine/ Laughing in the rain/ Our last summer/Memories that remain”.
There are two more features that I want to bring in before completing. In 2020, to mark its forty-fifth anniversary, PopMatters shared their words about an album that, in their minds, is uneven and has the odd filler track. I think Super Trouper is a classic that is well worth getting on vinyl. If you have not heard it before then do go and spend some time with it. A true classic that I would recommend to everyone. I do hope that we have not heard the last of ABBA when it comes to their incredible music:
“So, where exactly were ABBA in 1980? Not that anyone would have known it, but they were in the final year of their commercial ascension. One year later, The Visitors proved that while their artistic growth was ongoing, their commercial decline had begun. Singles released in 1982 (“Under Attack”, “The Day Before You Came”) registered far lower chart positions than those to which the group had become accustomed, especially in their key markets. 1980, on the other hand, was a banner year for ABBA, with two UK #1 singles and a US #8.
Super Trouper, their seventh album, arrived towards the end of the year with a sleeve that captured them in white-and-cream fripperies, standing in the glare of a large spot-light, surrounded by circus performers. Looking at the accompanying picture-sleeve singles, it wasn’t their finest moment in style terms. The discotheque ice-tones of the Voulez-Vous cover, and the “Summer Night City” video, had almost made them look hip. The Super Trouper-era singles heralded a retreat back to Day-Glo knitwear, fussy flamenco outfits, tight perms, and eye-straining, children’s TV presenter daywear. Some of these photo-sessions have been used for the album’s new inner sleeves (the original inner sleeve, featuring the lyrics against a maroon background, has been moved to the interior panels of the gatefold).
The music was a different story. ABBA were at an exquisite apex. Their lyrics bore witty and heart-rending turns of phrase that might have sounded guileful and over-baked coming from native English-speakers. Every track contained an abundance of celestial harmonies and devastating solo vocals. Underneath was a warm, rich, intricately textured blend of synthesizers and traditional instruments.
ABBA understood that the creative process is dynamic – everything influences everything. The received wisdom – that their sound was formed from schlager and other European influences – ignores how the group wore American inspiration quite conspicuously from the start. Their early hits, like “Ring Ring”, were in the great tradition of the American conveyor-belt pop of 1960s New York. On Super Trouper, it’s “On and on and On”, with its chugging, bar-band sensibility and mildly hedonistic lyric, that is probably the most American moment. It’s not surprising it was chosen as a US single, despite remaining an album track in most other territories.
Another prevalent dismissal of the group contends that they were ‘bubblegum’ – something to file alongside The Partridge Family, Boney M, and the Bay City Rollers. That is partly down to how Andersson and Ulvaeus, grappling with a second language, tended to cleave to perfect rhyme at all costs (“money/honey/funny”), presumably because they cared about craft and were learning as they went along. And it’s partly down to the gently-accented English and gauche apparel of their early years. But to believe that ABBA never transcended bubblegum, you’d have to ignore about 90 percent of their work, which had a far higher purpose.
Take, for example, the delicate art of the divorce song. ABBA had a peculiar flair for it, no matter the angle from which they approached this knotty subject of conflict and unresolved pain. On Abba (1975), they looked at it from the viewpoint of an outsider talking with rather brash concern to a divorced single mother (“Hey Hey Helen”). With “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, one year later, they were tackling it in the first person, with the narrator surveying an empty house that also served as a metaphor for her newly-evacuated marriage.
But it was, of course, on Super Trouper‘s “The Winner Takes It All” that the group perfected this curious sub-genre. It comprises just two melodic phrases. Thanks to the arrangement and production, a trick-of-the-ear is achieved, making the song seem elaborate and operatic. Perhaps it was the group’s most convincing divorce song because it came with the added poignancy of being rooted in experience. The Fältskog-Ulvaeus union had splintered during the creation of Voulez-Vous, the Andersson-Lyngstad marriage unraveling a year later. “The Winner Takes It All” is a dignified heartbreak set to music. The way ABBA put together couplets (“Nothing more to say / No more ace to play”) has a slightly odd, formal quality that betrays the writers’ overseas roots but somehow just serves to make it all the more touching.
Then there’s the iridescent title track, the final song assembled for the LP. The faintly silly “su-pah-pah, trou-pah-pah” backing vocals may invite mockery, but there’s great storytelling here. In the verse, Frida sounds matter-of-fact and listless as she relays the apparent privations, loneliness, and tedium of super-stardom. But this is all a set-up for a joyful chorus in which she imagines the thrill of stepping away from mass adulation and coming to life in a lovers’ tryst. Then comes that glorious, lilting, operatic bridge (“So I’ll be there / When you arrive / The sight of you will prove to me I’m still alive”), foreshadowing the exceptional melody writing that would be unveiled on the following year’s “I Let The Music Speak”.
Analog synths create an icy cathedral of sound for the unforgettable introduction to “Lay All Your Love on Me”, ABBA’s final disco song. Rarely has openly expressed jealousy, and the demand for exclusivity from a sexual partner sounded so slinky and appealing”.
I am going to wrap things up soon. I am going to end by sourcing from this article that noted how the 1970s party was over. Super Trouper marked the start of a more introspective era. The four-piece were “retooling themselves for a new decade”. Although there is some stiff competition, I do think that Super Trouper is ABBA’s best album. I can see why the group hold it in such regard. After a difficult and strained time, this seemed like something or a revival or rebirth. A slightly different sound for them, there is so much to love about Super Trouper:
“Across a tight 10 tracks, Super Trouper is like a greatest hits sampler, showcasing all the styles that made the group so successful. “The Winner Takes It All,” regularly voted the people’s favorite ABBA record, and a Top 10 hit in every major market, is the ballad that they never truly bettered. Drenched in pathos, it featured Agnetha’s greatest vocal performance and has been claimed as her favorite ABBA track.
The ballads dominate the album. “Happy New Year,” once earmarked for wide single release until the title track emerged, is a melancholic choker that effortlessly captures that messy moment when the clock strikes midnight. “Our Last Summer” again bathes us in a sentimental haze of melancholia; no one does happy-sad songs as well as ABBA, and the schlager foundations underpinning so much of their work are very evident here.
On “Super Trouper,” the last track to be recorded, but released as the album’s second single, the band’s classic European pop sound found its latter-day peak. In the UK, it proved to be their ninth, and final, chart-topper to date.
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. The exuberant roar of the dance classic “Lay All Your Love On Me” showed the band still knew how to get us out of our seats. This ahead-of-its-time anthem topped the Billboard dance charts and still fills floors to this day. Lighter fare such as “Andante Andante” and “Me And I,” meanwhile, proved that the standard album material ABBA produced remained leagues ahead of the competition.
Live track ‘The Way Old Friends Do,” lifted from their 1979 tour, closed Super Trouper and, in many ways, sums up the mood of the record. With personal and professional turbulence surrounding them, the four-piece retrenched into a safe place – focusing on simpler pop sounds familiar to the faithful. In time, the urge for experimentation would return but, for now, they remained content to be fixed in the spotlight that gave the album its name… just as long as the beam was a bit dimmer.
After all, it had been one hell of a party…”.
I am going to end it there. The title track is perhaps my favourite from Super Trouper. It is a song that I heard as a child and has stayed with my ever since. As both that single and the album it came from turn forty-five on 3rd November, I wanted to spend some time with an album that was to be one of the last ABBA made before a long time away. After releasing Voyage in 2021, many see this as a new phase for them. I do hope there is more from them. 1980’s Super Trouper is an album that will continue to resonate…
FOR generations more.