To not understand why Abba are considered so important ?

[AugustaProdworthy]

It's Abba arama on channel 5 this evening. I just don't understand- please can sonekbe explain why they are considered to be so good? I think I might be missing something?

So you moved here from Alpha Centuri then, lljkk?

As everyone else says, excellent song writing and stuff you never get sick of singing. And two strikingly beautiful lead singists didn't harm the cause either.

Deceptively simple pop songs with very very complex construction, and some of the catchiest lyrics ever. Their break-up songs were always the best for me, with 'When All Is Said And Done' being the best ever, followed by 'The Winner Takes It All'.

There just hasn't been a band that's turned out so much consistently good stuff - not to say there weren't a few turkeys, but percentage wise they are up there.

Winner Takes It All is fave, once I get passed the phenomenon that is Dancing Queen.

I'm a Finn, so I never got the choice to make up my own mind about them. I was brainwashed into loving them in my mother's womb.
Still my favourite band of all time. They're important to me.

Wonderful songs that are embedded in many peoples sub consciousness. they have stood the test of time and there are very few groups/bands that you can say that about, many had one "good" song, but few have a whole catalogue full of "good" songs. I'm not really that into popular music, but I can pretty much sing along to any abba and any Beatles song.

I loved Abba back in the day,

There wasn't an inch of my bedroom wall that wasn't covered in posters of them, my granny used to buy me all their records,

I didn't know about harmonies and construction back then, I just loved their music and still do.

And I wanted to be Agnetha

didn't rely on looks

Quite wrong. An awful lot of their appeal and rise was in the fact that the the singers were beautiful.

My favourite of theirs is 'Does Your Mother Know?' I think they were excellent songwriters, although tbh I never bought any of their music.

Especially Bjorn, eh Bad Lad

You rarely hear cover versions of Abba songs because it's almost impossible to do them justice. They are so so hard to sing, how many times have you seen an Abba song being murdered on the X Factor for example.

He was only lead singer in one song - does your mother know.

I still think they are cheesy.
In the same league as Tie a Yellow Ribbon, Sugar Sugar, David Cassidy.

I did and still prefer Rock.

My mum thought ABBA were wonderful. She would be 9O now.

They turned out hit after hit after hit back in the day and their music has endured for forty years.

You don't manage that without a touch of genius being in there somewhere.

They have some seriously unusual and complex harmonies in their songs. As someone said, you have to be bloody good singers to pull that off, which is why they're rarely covered.

I watched a documentary on ABBA a few years back, and one of the guys (Bjorn?) said he was embarrassed by some of their lyrics, like 'Since many years I haven't seen a rifle in your hand' in Fernando. He said that now he would change it to 'For many years'. I was so impressed that he could write lyrics like that without having fluent English.

Bjorn was lead singer in a few songs e.g. Rock me and Two for the price of one

I preferred the later albums and The Visitors, both track and album is my favourite. The Visitors was actually written about dissident Soviets during communist Russia so they weren't all about bubblegum pop (in fact they weren't at all).

Abba is timeless and they're music will be around long after they're gone!

Deceptively simple pop songs with very very complex construction, and some of the catchiest lyrics ever.

This sums it up perfectly for me. Their songs are actually really not the simple things they sound like they are. The more I learn about music, the more I like them.

Yes, my GCSE music teacher told us that the chords, harmonies, construction and arrangement of ABBA songs were pretty much genius and unprecedented, even if they sounded quite simple.

I stand corrected, but nevertheless, I stand by the point that the good looks of Agnetha and Anni-Frid were part of the appeal.

Certainly the music must be quality to be played so often decades later.