![]() ![]() critics were deaf to any other culture's sadness. ![]() Music of the 20 th century is so rooted in African-American suffering that it's no surprise that most U.S. He argued that this despondency runs through Swedish folk, Russian folk, classical composers like Finland's Jean Sibelius and Norway's Edvard Grieg, Ingmar Bergman movies, the voice of Swedish-born actress Greta Garbo and, sometimes, the harmonies of Lyngstad and her front line vocal partner Agnetha Fältskog. What Andersson did point out was that his group possessed a rarely acknowledged capacity for the sorrows of artists living within the "melancholy belt" above the 59 th latitude, where the sun virtually disappears for two months and snow falls for nearly half a year. He didn't mention his band was derided for this by authenticity-fixated critics during their '70s/early '80s heyday: Otherwise rightfully esteemed Village Voice critic Robert Christgau once wrote of ABBA, "We have met the enemy and they are them." While acknowledging the influence of the Leiber/Stoller, Goffin/King and Lennon/McCartney songwriting teams, as well as The Beach Boys, Motown, Joni Mitchell, Chuck Berry and The Kinks, he admitted an absence of American blues. During this program of classical music, jazz, Swedish folk, Italian arias, French chanson, German schmaltz and John Philip Sousa, there might have been one current song. He explained that there was only one radio station when they were kids in 1950s Sweden, and it played one, maybe two hours of music a day. ![]() While Lyngstad definitively dismissed reunion rumors, Andersson spoke of the quartet's musical roots and emotional core. The members of ABBA (from left): Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson at Waterloo station in London in 1974, the year the group won the Eurovision contest with the song "Waterloo."ĭressed in black and greeted by Barry and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, former ABBA members Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson took their 2010 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seriously and sincerely. ![]()
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