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, and 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.
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, and 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment