Why is ABBA the greatest pop band of all time?
This week’s question comes to us from Johan Berndtsson:
Why is ABBA the greatest pop band of all time?
Because you believe they are.
Let me tell you a story. When I was a young man I went to art school. I was terrified that I wouldn’t fit in. Which sounds ironic because art school is seen as this haven for individuality, and that’s not completely false, but at seventeen we’re also really, really hoping we fit in with the other seventeen year olds. Especially when it’s our first time away from home, and kind of our first act as “adults.” Double especially if we never really fit in at home and we’re hoping we fit in at this new place, which is supposed to be filled with other freaks1 like us.
So that first year of school was spent trying on different personas to fit in with different groups. You shave your head in September so you can hang with the hardcore kids, and by the time it’s grown back in January you can hang with the goths for a bit. Once the black dye washes out you can hang with the burnouts. (College was a lot about hair, man.)
This also means having to watch the right types of movies and read the right types of books. If you go to art school you will find yourself at the arthouse. A small theater with uncomfortable seats, no ventilation, a small screen, and last year’s art school graduate asking you if you want yeast on your popcorn. (Child, you do not.) But if you are a seventeen year old boy in art school and a seventeen year old girl2 asks if you want to go see the new Alain Resnais3 at The Roxy (It is always called The Roxy. Doesn’t matter what city you are in.) you go because you’re not a dummy. And soon you find yourself at The Roxy every weekend. The movies get grayer. They get longer. The plots get more convoluted. Some of the characters are playing chess. You are trying to enjoy these because, one: seventeen year old girl, and two: you believe that to be a good art student this is the type of movie you must enjoy. So you honestly try.
But then you’re home for Christmas and an old friend from high school invites you to go downtown and see a movie. You go to one of the old shitty two-screen theaters on Chestnut Street. Get a big tub of popcorn with chemical sludge butter and find yourself watching RoboCop4. The theater is packed. People are screaming at the screen. Things are exploding. Bad guys are getting shot in the nuts. Popcorn is flying through the air. It is heaven.
You go back to school. You go back to (attempting to) read French theory and watching movies at The Roxy. But you can’t get RoboCop out of your head. You invite the seventeen year old girl to go see it together and she breaks up with you two weeks later. So you start sneaking away to watch movies with explosions and testicle violence, and you start thinking of them as your “guilty pleasure.” And you start hiding the parts of yourself that bring you joy because they don’t fit in with what you believe is “supposed to” bring you joy.
ACAB includes policing your own joy.
Back to ABBA. I have no strong feelings about ABBA. But I have been in rooms with people who, like you, believe that ABBA is the greatest pop group of all time. I’ve seen the looks on their faces when the first few notes of a song play. I’ve seen them jump out of their seats. I’ve watched as they grabbed their partners’ arms and led them to the dance floor. I’ve watched as those rooms bounced and swayed with joy. And in those moments joy is unbridled and undeniable.
There is no pleasure one should feel guilty about if it is based on joy and love.
Be it ABBA, or RoboCop, or wrestling, or comics, or knitting, or fuck it i am just eating the whole pint, or drying flowers between the pages of a book.
Love what you love and love it fully.
Got a question you want me to answer? Ask it.
Zines are now available as a whole rack. Perfect for schools. (Otherwise the little fuckers will start reading French theory, and therein lies madness.)
James Baldwin doesn’t deserve this. The new Mdou Moctor deserves your attention, as does the new False Flag.
🍉
I was raised by John Waters and “freaks” will always be high praise from me.
Please feel free to replace with your gender preferences of choice. I am writing from the autobiographical, and all is love.
To be fair to Alain Resnais, the man makes a good movie. But lordy, you have to be in a mood for his type of movie, and I am most often not in that mood.
Also, this movie seriously fucked with my head. First off you find yourself cheering for a cop and that’s messed up. But then the cop kills a billionaire and you’re like… damn. I dunno. Complexity.