Though year zero for Abba as far as the UK charts were concerned, the band had already enjoyed no small European success before 'Waterloo' and the Eurovision Song Contest came along. But whilst the likes of 'Ring Ring' and 'People Need Love' were firmly rooted in the knees-up music of the schlager tradition, 'Waterloo' was a conscious stab at a more Anglo/American pop approach with one eye on the classic 'it's got a backbeat you can't lose it' rock & roll structure with the other (or make that the left hand) embellishing it by picking out some wonderfully rolling boogie woogie jazz piano fills.From the opening bars, 'Waterloo' is infectious enough to grab the attention of the half awake, but then the opening cry:
"My my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way"
elicits a 'wha..???' ; rare for Napoleon to get name checked in a pop song and it blows expectations right off course (out of interest, I couldn't find out how many points France gave this at Eurovision). It's not a literal history lesson though - 'Waterloo' here is used as metaphor to describe the crumbling of the singer's resistance to the charms of her suitor and a surrender to the inevitable power of love. It's similar, though not the same as Lyn Paul putting up with any kind of wrong treatment at the hands of her bloke in 'You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me'; we don't even know why the singer in 'Waterloo' resisted for so long, but there's no doubt that the song is a joy of celebration rather than a resigned shrug; "And how could I ever refuse, I feel like I win when I lose". There are no fools in this relationship.
It was rare for anything under the Abba banner to be truly original, and true to form they've cited 'See My Baby Jive' as an inspiration for the song. In a side by side comparison you can hear the influence, but while Roy Wood was hell bent on shoehorning as many kitchen sinks as possible into his production, Benny and Bjorn have a firmer grasp of the clean, unfussy lines necessary for a rock based stomper; they're content to simply follow the blueprint rather than try to better it. Sure there are enough piano's and horns for everyone, but not to the extent that the basic tune is swamped and in so doing it ensures that 'Waterloo' never pauses for breath for first to last.
Lively and up-tempo it may be, my main beef with 'Waterloo' is with its inherent unbending stiffness. Abba were to become masters of the disco genre, but 'Waterloo' doesn't simply doesn't groove. There's a constant 4/4 drum beat in the background that sounds like a handclap and, perhaps providing a revealing throwback to the band's aforementioned schlager roots, it summons up visions of a roomful of seated people happily clapping along. Which is what the audience for the Eurovision Song Contest were, so horses for courses I guess. Though that's not a damning criticism - 'Waterloo' is a memorable song that would have remained memorable even if Abba had promptly faded into obscurity the following year. But they didn't, and hindsight shows that the seated audience would soon be up on their feet.
I can answer the question about France at Eurovision when 'Waterloo' won. In fact, France never competed that year, so there was no French jury to award points to ABBA's song. In fact, France dropped out of the show at the last minute - President Pompidou had just died, and French TV felt it was inappropriate to participate in a light entertainment event at that moment.
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