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From here on in there will increasingly be occasions where I'm forced to pause to ponder exactly what it is I'm trying to achieve with all this. You see, as time has gone on the planets have been slowly aligning to the point where the music charts and my own life as lived by me start to fuse into a single rail, making it hard to divorce objectivity from pure sentiment.
'When A Child Is Born' is the first stark example of this alignment, being as it is the soundtrack to the first Christmas where I can remember being aware beforehand that this thing called Christmas was coming and all that it entailed. To that extent, hearing the opening hums of 'When A Child Is Born' stirs my emotions as violently as being hit in the face with a claw hammer.....Action Man deep sea diver set, Evel Knievel stunt cycle, Wizard of Oz on the telly, Johnny Mathis on the radio. Sigh. Those were the days. But I'll try and keep myself in check....
The 'funny' thing about 'When A Child Is Born' though is that, like Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'The Power Of Love', it's a non-Christmas song that's 'become' a Christmas song via its unavoidable link to the festive season. In Frankie's case it was through its video, but although 'When A Child Is Born' has no mention of Jesus or stables, the inference is there in its very title and it's central metaphor of children being our hope for the future etc. is just the thing to warm the coldest of hearts at Yuletide. Ahem.
And to be honest, it's the very fact that it is Christmas that allows Mathis enough slack to get away with this; get away with it far more than he would had it been released in July anyway. Fair enough, the melody is a pretty one with a light and sparse arrangement that gives it room to breathe, but then it really needs all the space it can get to make way for Johnny's heavyweight handwringing; "And the walls of doubt crumble, tossed and torn. This comes to pass when a child is born."
Variations on this theme are piled on with all the subtlety and finesse of ten ton of readymix pouring out of a cement wagon, thickened all the while by Mathis's overbearing sincerity until by the time it's over it leaves me feeling like I've stuffed too much Christmas cake and chocolate. And yes I know he means well, but the spoken passage "And all of this happens because the world is waiting, waiting for one child. Black, white, yellow, no-one knows" has a faintly offensive ring to modern sensibilities. Yellow indeed!*
'When A Child Is Born' is overly sentimental with saccharine tang but I refuse to be too hard on it, simply because it does light a candle of remembrance deep inside me and well - hey - it is Christmas after all (and not forgetting the comedic touch of what must be the all-time most inappropriate B side - what's going on there Johnny)? But if somebody else wants to take a chainsaw to all this nonsense then I won't stand in their way. Just as long as the blood isn't on my hands.
* Pity the Orientals, they had a tough old time at the hands of well meaning seventies multiculturalism songwriters; we've already had 'Kung Fu Fighting' and its 'funky Chinaman' but who could also forget Blue Mink's 'Melting Pot' call for racial toleration:
"Take a pinch of white man
Wrap it up in black skin
Add a touch of blue blood
And a little bitty-bit of red Indian boy
Mm, curly Latin kinkies
Mixed with yellow Chinkies
If you lump it all together
Well, you've got a recipe for a get-along scene"
Or a recipe for a prosecution under the Race Relations Act - just how many people is that little lot going to offend now I wonder?
To my mind there are two general working definitions of 'rock & roll'. On one hand, it's basic music typified by a driving, primal backbeat laced with sexual tension and the implicit danger of imminent violence, both of which are generally reflected in innuendo riddled lyrics. On the other, it's a catch-all genre of safe and nostalgic good time dance music that supposedly blasted out of imaginary jukeboxes in an unspecified yet idealised sixties 'American Graffiti' landscape of diners and drive-ins. In our modern day, 'R&B' has a similar dual definition; it all depends on who you ask to define it.
Falling firmly into the latter category, Showaddywaddy had been purveyors of (mostly) rock & roll cover versions both well known and obscure since 1973, with 'Under The Moon Of Love' being originally a US hit for Curtis Lee in 1961. Showaddywaddy's version is almost a tracing paper copy with the only differences being what it erases. The squally backing vocals of the original are tidied up (and actually improve the song by putting more focus on the stuttering melody), but so is the greasy Gene Barge/Church Street Five a-like swagger of the original's saxophone riff.
What all this housekeeping does is make the song safe, and in defusing any flashpoints Showaddywaddy offer up a risk free clapathon that even your gran would sing along to at a family knees up. Fun maybe, but it's the sound of a band and a genre trapped in paralysis. True enough that Showaddywaddy never made any claims as innovators or pretended they were anything other than cartoon revivalists in bolo ties and brothel creepers, but nothing changes by standing still either.
'Under The Moon Of Love' was co-written by Tommy Boyce who also co-wrote '(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone' for Paul Revere & The Raiders (though made famous by The Monkees). And while Showaddywaddy were lording it at the top of the charts with the former song, at almost exactly the same time in Wessex Studios, the Sex Pistols were demoing the latter and imbuing it with the hiss and the danger that would come to terrorise an uncomprehending generation the way Elvis did with a simple shake of his hips twenty years previously.
And there we have it - one writer, two songs, two bands and both sides of the rock & roll coin. All contemporary footage show Showaddywaddy having a blast in their retro Ted outfits, but hindsight shows it was later than they thought.
Throughout the seventies and early years of the eighties there were a number of American soft rock bands that, although huge in their homeland and lorded it over FM radio, meant next to diddly squat in the UK. I say 'next to' because most of them had at least one signature tune that successfully made the journey over. Examples? Well Kansas - 'Dust In The Wind', REO Speedwagon - 'Keep On Loving You', Blue Oyster Cult - 'Don't Fear The Reaper', Journey - 'Don't Stop Believing', Survivor - 'Eye Of The Tiger', Boston - 'More Than A Feeling'. And so on.
To that list can be added Chicago. Although popular enough back home to be able to release a quadruple live album in 1971, it took their tenth album to spawn the song that made the UK sit up and take notice; 'If You Leave Me Now' is a low key ballad written and sung by bassist Peter Cetera. The title itself is the hook - "If you leave me now, you'll take away the biggest part of me"; utterly meaningless, but it sounds sincere, and that's my main gripe with song - it's all too deliberately low lights, soft focus blown-dry and airbrushed to within an inch of it's life to convey any genuine feeling. After all, even a dog can shake hands.
Cetera's pleading with his lover to stay "How could we end it all this way. When tomorrow comes and we'll both regret he things we said today. How could we let it slip away" rings as hollow as the dull thud from a cracked bell. There's a lot of 'we' in there, but I think he's bluffing; those 'woh woh woh woh's' sound more like a dog in heat than one of the broken hearted and he finally shows his hand on the closing "Oh mama, I just got to have your lovin', yeah". Rampant self interest does not a good love ballad make and, poor old Pete, he's more concerned about where his next leg-over is coming from than what his 'mama' (oh dear) wants from the relationship. Someone throw a bucket of water over that man quickly, the girl deserves better.
I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York a few years ago and I was quite taken with a piece titled 'Once Were Loved'. It was a simple enough construction, being just a wall mounted with stuffed toys that had been found in the street or charity shops; in other words, toys that were loved once but no more.
The same principle seems to apply to certain number one singles too. I mean, it's a basic enough observation that there are some that endure. Age does not wither them and it's as if the passing of time justifies their status as the most popular song amongst the record buying public of that time. Conversely, there are those that slip off the radar once they've had their time in the sun - like the toys on that wall, they were popular once but not anymore.
Pussycat's 'Mississippi' is a good example of this I think, probably the best example from the whole decade in fact. How many will own up to remembering either band or song I wonder? And that's strange because it's a memorable song. With an American West Coast style backing and a very English Rose vocal, 'Mississippi' sounds almost stateless yet Pussycat were in fact Dutch, managing to do what other Dutch acts like Golden Earring and Focus before them couldn't - that is, get to number one.
An observational tale, 'Mississippi' tells how "the country song for ever lost its soul, when the guitar player turned to rock & roll". Which isn't factually correct on any level, but no matter - Pussycat were out to create a general mood of times past rather than re-write Tony Palmer and in that they do a fair enough job. Borrowing heavily from The Carpenters' 'Top Of The World', this 'Mississippi' flows along on a steel guitar led acoustic strum with treacly, overbearing strings ladled over the top with a honey spoon.
Ok, 'Mississippi' licks more than it bites, but it's saved from its own inconsequence by a highly distinctive lead vocal from Tonny Kowalczyk, a Mary Hopkin look-a-like who ambles behind the song's already lazy rhythm with a voice that's a distinctive mixture of cut glass and grit. It completely distracts from the nonsense of the lyrics and her yearning, regretful tone on the soaring chorus serves to remind of summer's past, so much so it never makes you question why a Dutch band should give two hoots about country music in the American south. 'Mississippi' is no masterpiece, but neither does it deserve to languish in forgotten limbo. Such is life I guess.
If I was wearing my cynic's hat then this could be done with quite quickly; Swedish chancers jump on the disco bandwagon by stealing a groove from 'Rock Your Baby' and fashioning some clichéd lyrics about dancing to go over the top of it. There. Job done. That's what ‘Dancing Queen’ is after all.
Except it isn't, and describing it this way is the same as saying that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has some Biblical scenes painted on it - accurate as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough; ‘Dancing Queen’ is 'just' a dance song true, but only in the way that Michelangelo was just an interior decorator. Because seven inches of high strength Prozac that comes equipped with its own spotlight and mirror ball (which is what ‘Dancing Queen’ actually is) needs a grander title than that.
But anyway, look at this –
“So. By 1989, I’d decided that ‘Dancing Queen’ was the saddest song I’d ever heard in my life.Youth’s self-disgust/sell obsession had me by the ankles. I’d stand by the wall at parties, naturally. Determined to convince myself that all human happiness was a lie (I considered myself something of a one off……), proud to find faith in insecurity; appallingly self conscious through the recent realisation I was ridiculous…and reproachful. So watching violently beautiful girls my age, unburdened by This Heroic Self Loathing (oh yes, you would have loved me…), letting loose and, well, dancing – that foreign celebration of oneness-with-the-body! And a display of power, surely? Defiantly clumsy, something as natural and unspectacular as dancing became, for me, a totem of confidence, and the shining symbol of What I Was Not….”
Not my words, but those of music writer Taylor Paris and, overwritten as they are, they neatly capture certain of the extremities of emotion that this song throws up. Self loathing? Maybe. Yet although I know where he's coming from, try as I might I simply cannot hear any sadness at all in ‘Dancing Queen’. Paris’ voyeuristic and jealous ogling of a seventeen year life he wasn't part of may have served as a catalyst to reflect the frustrations at his inability to participate, but that's no fault of Abba's.
The key, I think, is in what they are saying in all this. Now, knowing their sometimes.....novel.... take on the English language, I'm a little wary over ever ascribing too much weight to subtle nuances in their lyrics. In general, Abba use words like the Impressionists used paint; that is, as a medium designed to create a mood or carry a narrative rather than close scrutiny or academic discussion. To take an example, 'Fernando's much derided “And since many years I haven’t seen a rifle in your hand" looks as awkward as a baby horse on ice when written down yet it sounds fine dropping out of Anni-Frid's mouth.
Yes, you can sulk and stare at “Where they play the right music, getting in the swing, you come in to look for a king” if you want, but it's on 'when you get the chance, you are…" that Abba switch direction and turn their gaze mid flow away from that girl on the dance floor to put the spotlight on the scowling Taylor Paris’s watching shyly from the sidelines to urge 'YOU can dance, YOU can jive, having the time of YOUR life'. And it's this breaking of the third wall that blows ‘Dancing Queen’ wide open from a central focus so that it becomes a state of mind for everyman rather than a simple description of a Friday night when the lights are low; anybody can be seventeen again if you dance hard enough the song is saying (well it is to me anyway).
‘Dancing Queen’ is 'about' being lost in an insular moment of personal happiness, a legal high triggered by feeling "the beat of the TAM-BOUR-INE!!!!", a word not so much sang as orgasmed by the girls in a wide eyed rapture of command, making its subject sound like a Reichian orgone accumulator rather than a simple hand percussion instrument. When listened to in the right frame of mind it can literally take your breath away. Not that I'm looking to equate ‘Dancing Queen’ with some arch Situationist statement you understand, but if I were then there'd be a dancefloor under those paving stones instead of a beach. I bet Guy Debord would have been jiving along, a
nd in that, Abba make it very easy - I commented back on 'Mamma Mia' about Abba's generosity with their hooks and middle eights, but ‘Dancing Queen’ calls me a liar by ditching any clutter and sashaying along on a closed groove verse-chorus-verse structure that never deviates from its goal.
At the close, ‘Dancing Queen’ fades away into silence to let reality take over again. The lights go on and the Taylor Paris’s of the world go home and cry themselves to sleep. That’s up to them – Abba aren’t life counsellors. For the rest of us, the realisation that we aren’t seventeen anymore only raises a wry smile after the rush ‘Dancing Queen’ gives while you're riding the waves. Temporary, but nothing lasts forever does it? Even being seventeen only lasts twelve months, but ‘Dancing Queen’ is a permanent joy from start to finish, a sparkling, strobe light swept monolith that stands at the heart of seventies popular music. Some would say it stands at the pinnacle and, when I'm in the right frame of mind, I'd find that hard to argue with.
Up until 1990, it seemed impossible for anyone to mention 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' without referring to the fact that it was Elton's only number one, as if there was some kind mystery to it. But never mind Elton, stranger fact to me is that it remains Kiki Dee's biggest claim to fame. Why she never enjoyed a higher profile ('Amoureuse' only a number 13!!!!!) I'll never understand, but I digress.
So what about this? Well, though it's billed as a duet, it's an Elton John song through and through. And as an Elton John song, 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' flatters to deceive. From a slow building, cat creep of an introduction to an explosive opening call and response, the initial impression given is of something of substance quietly building up a good head of steam. But it doesn't last.
Like a blind date starting out with both parties on their best behaviour, eager to please and laughing at each other's jokes that ends in the predictable and sober realisation that there's no spark there after all and each can't wait to get away from the other, 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' falls into a rut of joyless repetition with John and Dee singing past rather than to each other. The cover says it all really.
There's a strain about it all, a forcedness that sits ill with the jovial bounce the tune tries to generate and it lets the air out of the ball with the hiss of a slow puncture. All surface, 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' is a fun song that forgot to add the fun and it bores long before it gets to the end. Elton would chance his arm again in similar style on 'Part Time Love' in 1978, but lightning didn't strike twice.
If Barry White was an easy, barn door target for seventies satirists, then Demis Roussos provided a bigger one. Literally. They didn't even need to black up to take the mick - a scraggly beard, a load of blankets, a generically whining high pitched voice and Bob was their uncle. Nice work if you can get it, as they say.
I've been doing some nosing around the internet for this one, mainly because I was curious to see what basis there was for that description of 'phenomenon' in the title. Because truth be told, I simply can't recall him being one. Seasoned rock fans would maybe have pointed to his pedigree with Aphrodite's Child, but away from their Book of Revelation concept albums, Roussos's solo career ploughed a very different furrow. Yet apart from a handful of earlier singles, there's nothing that warrants such grandiose self promoting. But what the hell, he made number one so it paid off well enough.
Another thing I found in my research was that virtually every reference to this EP considers 'Forever And Ever' to be the lead track of the four. Strange really, because I seem to remember 'My Friend The Wind' getting most airplay back then and it's the one that springs to my mind most readily. Why this should be I don't know, though not that it matters all that much; the four tracks on the EP are virtually interchangeable for the most part with only the brisk bolero beat of 'Sing An Ode To Love' breaking ranks (the fourth track is 'So Dreamy'). Each song offers up a warm, vaguely Mediterranean feel that breezes along on a backing of John Barry-esque female ba ba ba ba vocals and the substance of a very pleasant yet only half remembered memory.
And that really is the main problem with 'The Roussos Phenomenon'; too much Demis. The simple fact is that, unlike other 'high end' vocalists like, say, Jimmy Scott, Roussos isn't a singer I can listen to for hours on end. Each of the four songs could potentially have been a single in its own right, but taken together then the whole winds up drowning itself in a thick jug of olive oil. Roussos's vocals (the subject of much hilarity in their time) hang sweetly to the melody of each track with the restrained power of a volcano ready to blow and they in turn give a unique credibility and a touch of the exotic to the semi-mystical tone of the songs that they probably don't deserve.
But in saying that, I can't dismiss this out of hand as a cheesy period piece. Roussos is not singing to me in any of these songs, and yet like a warm bath I'm in no hurry to get out of, listening to them doesn't make me itch for the off button. Ultimately though, 'The Roussos Phenomenon' is a useful snapshot reminder of a nice holiday in the sun that came with a two week romance, but you can only look at so many pictures of the same landscape before getting bored, no matter how pretty it is.
Ironically, despite their name, The Real Thing weren't. Weren't a genuine Philadelphia soul vocal group that is, which is the genre that 'You To Me Are Everything' models it's sound on. The band were actually home-grown in Liverpool, and whilst this isn't necessarily a headshot to any ambitions in this field, employing the song's writer (Ken Gold) as producer probably was. Because while Gold had chops enough to create a tune that was more than a mere pastiche of Gamble and Huff, the end recording sounds far too brittle and plastic to scrape the sky the way G&H's finest did. Which is just as well really seeing as the vocals from the Amoo brothers are more flat earth than celestial.
But I'm being too harsh now -'You To Me Are Everything' is undoubtedly a memorable tune, largely because its workaday disco strut multitasks like crazy to allow the song a ubiquity of context that a more specialised example of the genre perhaps wouldn't have. Put simply, it's an upbeat everyman song with an upbeat everyman message. You can take 'You To Me Are Everything' anywhere and it will always sound right at home. It knows which knife to use at the posh do's and it will add a veneer of class to even the tackiest of gatherings. Seems like a fair enough legacy to me.
The Wurzels started life in 1966 as a semi-serious folk (or 'Scrumpy & Western' as their first EP was called) band lead by Adge Cutler. Following his death in 1974, The Wurzels found themselves without their main songwriter, but rather than call it a day they carried on by 'Wurzelising' other people's tunes instead of writing their own from scratch. Thus, "The Combine Harvester" is a skit on professional hippy Melanie Safka's 'Brand New Key'. As someone who has always found all elements of Ms Safka's output insufferably grating, The Wurzels were already more than halfway toward winning me over with their take on her song, but in truth whether you find any of this amusing depends a lot on how far you're willing to buy into the stereotype of West Country folk being straw sucking, smock wearing, cider swilling farmboy yokels.
Because regardless of the parody within the song, this is the joke that The Wurzels were now peddling, no more and no less (which probably makes "The Combine Harvester" the UK number one that travels least well) and each successive single after "The Combine Harvester" flogged this particular horse all the way to the knackers yard. The record buying public were savvy enough to recognise a one trick pony when they saw one too with with each subsequent single doing less well in the charts than the previous, but as far as this goes, "The Combine Harvester" presents a neat and complete package of sound and vision. And just as long as you're willing to play along, it will consistently raise a smile, especially if you have sight of singer Pete Budd's archetypical village idiots face beaming back at you with his "I drove my tractor through your haystack last night", surely the inspiration for Spinal Tap's 'Sex Farm'.* Shame really that it wasn't a one off.
* Though obviously they turned the innuendo up to 11:
"Working on a sex farm
Trying to raise some hard love
Getting out my pitch fork
And poking your hay"
Back on 'Stand By Your Man', I commented that country music tends to be straightforward in its internal morality. I thought that the Wynette track was a good example of this but, by god, 'No Charge' is a better one.
Originally recorded by Melba Montgomery in 1974, 'No Charge' is less a song and more a forthright and utterly humourless sermon on motherhood; a burgeoning adolescent capitalist presents his mother with an invoice for his week's labours ("For mowing the lawn, five dollars". "For making my own bed this week, one dollar" and so on). Instead of settling up, his mother presents an inventory of her own ("For the nine months I carried you growing inside me, no charge" and so on and so on) with the pay off being "Lord knows when you add it all up, the cost of real love is no charge". No charge, just a load of emotional blackmail eh JJ?
But skip all that, whatever you make of the questionable logic there's no doubt it made a lot more sense coming from a woman. Barrie acts as an observer to this little episode and recounts it spoken word in the third person which at a stroke more than halves any emotional kick the song may have had.* And to distract further from his forced sincerity, the 'mother' verses are double tracked by the yell and screech of a would-be revivalist belter, rattling out the mother's side as a backing vocal that all but obliterates Barrie's lead.
It all boils down to the fact that no matter how hard he tries with his furrowed brow sincerity, Barrie adds nothing to, nor wrings anything out of the song and all that remains is a lop sided monstrosity that uses a tone of semi religious awe to hide the fact it's got precious little to say for itself. One of the worst number ones we are going to encounter on our travels, but for this review (and all the others) - no charge.
* No doubt many fathers would have stepped in with an "Why you ungrateful little brat" and given him a clip round the ear. Perhaps Barrie was too afraid of a "Well I never ASKED to be born bitch" response that would have checkmated his song to a standstill.
If you were to plot their singles on a graph, then 'Fernando' would stand out as something of a curveball in Abba's march to pop perfection. If 'Mamma Mia' and 'SOS' were signs of an engine sparking and firing into life then the campfire singalong of 'Fernando' serves to put the brakes on the forward momentum that had been building and shift them back a step or two. Part of the 'blame' for this is rooted in the fact that 'Fernando' was originally written and recorded as a solo effort by Anni-Frid in 1975, a version that proved so popular it was resurrected as a band recording, albeit with radically different lyrics.
Ah yes, the lyrics - with love and its loss as Abba's stock in trade to date, this tale of ageing Mexican revolutionaries reminiscing about their fighting days would make for odd subject matter for any number one, let alone glam slam Swedish pop stars. Yet any bewilderment is quickly short circuited by the cracked and broken way Anni-Frid pitches the second 'Fernando'. With no smiles, it lets you know that regardless of what anyone thinks about Abba going all Townes Van Zandt, all concerned are taking it seriously; 'Fernando' is not presented as a novelty and the suppressed violence of the downbeat lyrics:
"I was so afraid Fernando, we were young and full of life and none of us prepared to die
And I'm not ashamed to say the roar of guns and cannons almost made me cry"
generate an incredibly maudlin atmosphere totally at odds with the image Abba usually presented to the world. So much so you can almost hear the sigh of relief at the chorus when we're given something to sing along to.
Yet for me, it's this very factor that makes 'Fernando' not quite the success it could have been. It's not that the band were consciously keeping one ear on their commercial side by adding a happy tune at odds with the preceding verses; rather, it's the manner of its execution. The jump from darkness to light always reminds me of the similar stroke pulled in The Beatles' 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds', but whereas they had Starr's three thumping drum beats to mark the shift to the chorus (which by themselves are a clumsy mechanism for making the link), 'Fernando' free falls into it, dragging its listeners along but then leaving them stranded when it's over and the shadows start falling again. You never know what you're meant to do with the song, whether to listen respectfully or join hands to sing along and its this uncertainty that makes it unsatisfying.
I've always thought of 'Fernando' in terms of naivety within the band rather than as a consciously brave departure from the norm. It has an undeniably memorable tune and, as this is what Abba are famed for, nobody can complain too loudly. But in a parallel universe, Abba followed it up with something other than 'Dancing Queen' and with momentum lost, their career sputtered to an early close. But of course they did follow it up with 'Dancing Queen', a song so strong it scorched their back catalogue clean and set them up for immortality. So no harm done. But that's another story.
I can't say I'm a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest. It's a nice idea I guess, and as it doesn't involve the slow death of children or animals then I'm happy enough to let them get on with it without any pro or anti involvement from me. I feel much the same about those rustic people who still use horses as a form of everyday transport. That's fine too, just as long as they stick to the bridleways and hillsides. But if our two worlds collide and I spy a horse and rider in front of me when I'm out driving then a red mist descends and my knuckles glow white on the steering wheel. And so it goes at times if there's a spillover from Eurovision in the form of a chart single.
Because put simply, what makes a good single isn't necessarily what makes a good Eurovision song. In general terms, the 45rpm format presents a blank canvas on which an artist can condense their art into a perfect two to five minute chunk. That doesn't mean all bets are off; there are certain parameters that need to be observed and anything wilfully obscure, difficult or plain bloody minded just isn't going to sell. It doesn't make for a good single either. As I said earlier, 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' is a good song, but I don't think it's necessarily a good single. On the other hand, 'Waterloo', is both a good Eurovision song and a good single in its own right. But it's a fine line.
For Eurovision, the writers have around three minutes to capture the hearts and minds of a truly cosmopolitan judging audience. That it requires a simple, catchy tune is a no brainer and on that front at least, being no brain, nursery rhyme simple with a fixed grin beaming relentlessly from out of the grooves, 'Save All Your Kisses For Me' ticks all the right boxes to the extent that one hearing is all you need to whistle along. And even if you can't speak a word of English, you can tell from its tone that the Brotherhood are not singing about anything like rape or murder. They didn't look like they were either; unfortunately, I'm of age enough to have experienced this at first hand and I simply cannot hear the song now without picturing the four of them lined up all berets and flares like woodentops, prancing out this song with their little hand gestures and kicks as accompaniment.
What they are in fact singing about is the anguish of leaving a loved one behind every day as they go off to their job: "I've got to work each day and that's why I go away, but I count the seconds till I'm home with you". In the real world, any partner this needy of attention or simple minded enough to warrant this level of reassurance is not one cut out to engage in a serious, lifelong relationship. But of course, the twist ending reveals whose kisses are being saved: "Won't you save them for me, even though you're only three". Awwww shucks. You're meant to say.
And I seem to remember that a lot of girls (again, it was always the girls) back in the day, taken as they were with the cuteness of it all did say just that, with 'Sweet' or 'lovely' the most common descriptions. Maybe it is all that, and maybe I'm a hard hearted bastard for disagreeing. Fine. I can live with that. I've been called worse. But if that's indeed what I am then I'll go for broke and say 'Save All Your Kisses For Me' would be fine and fitting fodder as a highlight of an out of season cabaret show staged on the arse end of a clapped out pier pavilion when played to an audience of blue rinses sheltering from the rain outside, but that at the top of the charts it's about as welcome as the crunch of jackboots and spraypainted swastikas in a synagogue. There, see how much of a hard hearted bastard I can really be?
Ah, now this one has always confused me - "I love to love, but my baby just loves to dance, he wants to dance, he loves to dance, he’s got to dance"; poor old Tina, she's stuck in a relationship with a bloke who's always too busy strutting his stuff on the dancefloor to give her the seeing to she wants. Seems to me that she can't take a hint, but nevertheless Tina sounds strangely pleased with herself about it all. In fact, she gets stuck into the song as if her life (or career) depended on it, but her enthusiasm isn't particularly infectious and it's not enough to raise the interest bar too high. And that's because 'I Love To Love' is not that interesting a song.
Produced by Biddu (who'd previously penned the earlier chart topping 'Kung Fu Fighting')*, the main melody is catchy enough at first blush but its one dimensional nature means it chases its own tail for virtually the song's whole running time. 'I Love To Love' has no story to it, no beginning or an end; Charles makes that curious opening observation then continues to make it again and again and again and again with no elaboration until that "I love to love, but my baby just loves to dance" line is repeated around twenty times in three minutes.
It would have helped if it was carried a seriously funky backing, but 'I Love To Love' has the lightest of anonymous disco grooves burbling away behind it, too timid to do anything other than let Charles' vocal steamroller over the top of it without putting up any resistance at all. It's not that the Brits couldn't do disco properly (think of the Bee Gees for proof of this), but 'I Love To Love' is an identikit attempt at the genre with the component parts pulled out of a cheap Christmas cracker with Charles herself sounding like your tipsy mum singing karaoke at her birthday party. Like a doorstopping Jehovah's Witness on a Sunday morning, 'I Love To Love' is too smiley and friendly to get angry at, but it's not something you'd encourage to hang around for too long.
* On a point of trivia - Charles too had already been at number one when she sang backing on Steve Harley's 'Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)'.
"Oh, what a night, late December back in '63. What a very special time for me" sings Gerry Polci (usual lead Frankie Valli was relegated to a supporting role for this release), getting all dewy eyed about the time he got his cherry popped by some anonymous female ("I didn't even know her name"). While this might seem a risqué subject matter for a chart topper, it gets away with it through a good natured disco beat and general lack of sleaze.
Polci doesn't afford the moment any monumental significance (unlike Bobby Goldsboro in 'Summer (The First Time)' - what is it with virginity losing and brackets???), and neither is the "I felt a rush like a rolling bolt of thunder" a seedy nudge nudge in the ribs; 'December, 63' is an affectionate, inoffensive remembrance delivered with a fond smile ("as I recall it ended much too soon") and not a leering smirk.
Musically too, The Four Seasons had re-booted their sound from their 1960's doo-wop roots to cash in on the disco scene. And while writer Bob Gaudio was no Giorgio Moroder in those stakes, he injects 'December 63' with enough bounce to keep it rolling along from start to finish with Valli chipping in with enough of his falsetto to keep the hardcore fanbase happy. More than that, it gives the sixties nostalgia of the lyric a genuine sixties voice to provide a familiar anchor amongst all the newness. A decent song.
Well talk about wrong footing your audience - 'Forever And Ever' opens in a gothic swirl of chanting and bells before settling into a Krautrock throb that tries to fool you that something by Neu! or Cluster has slipped through the net and landed at number one. But wait....what's this....the scary monster mask is soon ripped off to reveal the bastard offspring of Les McKeown and Mickie Most grinning like the village idiot underneath with the promise to "love you forever and everrrrrrrrrrrr". Oh.
It tries to regain composure by having a second bite at the melodrama at the second round of verses but by then it's way too late; the cat is out of the bag and the discerning listener is horrified to discover that 'Forever And Ever' is simple bubblegum tarted up in it's big brother's prog record collection with only the sheer bloody cheek of it all saving it from the toilet of pop history (that and the fact it's a neat illustration of 'What Midge Did' before Ultravox and Band Aid).*
* Actually, there was a time when I'd brand any music trying to pass itself off as something it wasn't as 'Slik Music'. The problem was, this only really works when it's written down and then only when the other parties have a) heard of Slik and b) know my opinion of them. Kind of makes my earlier mickey taking of Tony Orlando and his 'Knock Three Times' code look like so much hubris really. Ah well.
One of the things I always enjoy most about Abba is the extreme generosity of their music. At their best, their songs come packed with more hooks than a tackle bag, and on that front 'Mamma Mia' is probably the prime example of what I mean. Most lesser bands would never have squandered so much in one shot, they'd have strip mined the tune to produce three or four separate songs, each with a killer chorus of its own. But with melodies to burn, Benny and Bjorn could afford to cram them all into one three and a half minute nutshell.
Though perhaps 'cram' is an unfair description, suggesting as it does something forced, something shoddily knocked together; whatever else 'Mamma Mia' might be, it is definitely not shoddy. What it is though is rather too brisk and breathless for it's own good. And that's because throughout it's duration, 'Mamma Mia' never sits still for a second. As soon as one tune establishes itself as a core melody it turns on a sixpence and changes key or tempo into something else entirely, making it a very nervy listen.
Whenever I hear 'Mamma Mia', I hear the sound of craftsmen who have not yet quite perfected their art. In their eagerness to please Western audiences and break free of the European oompah of previous fayre like 'Ring Ring', 'I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do' (and even 'SOS', albeit to a lesser extent) Abba chuck all their eggs into one basket, oblivious in their enthusiasm that some crack and leak all over the others. And in so doing 'Mamma Mia' never manages to hammer out a definitive theme of its own.
'Mamma Mia' is often credited as the song the kick started Abba's seventies superstardom. While that may be true, it's also true that it's one of the chief examples that evidences the accusation of 'cheesy' that came to tar their whole canon. "Yes, I've been brokenhearted, blue since the day we parted" sings an Anna Frid sounding anything but, while the exclamation of 'Mamma Mia' as an expression of self frustration in the lyrics doesn't suit in any way either (does anybody really say that outside of Italian stereotypes?) and only winds up giving the song the sort of cornball (or cheesy) aura they were desperate to break free of.
And hands up, I know this all sounds like a churlish and possibly unfair demolition of one of Abba's most loved songs, and I probably wouldn't have made it without the benefit of hindsight reference to the singles to come. But nevertheless, I always think a good pop single should provide the comfort of expectation in it's melody and 'Mamma Mia' is just too busy and unpredictable to be truly enjoyable. 'Mamma Mia' is good fun but Abba could and would do much, much better.
From here on in there will increasingly be occasions where I'm forced to pause to ponder exactly what it is I'm trying to achieve with all this. You see, as time has gone on the planets have been slowly aligning to the point where the music charts and my own life as lived by me start to fuse into a single rail, making it hard to divorce objectivity from pure sentiment. 
