ABBA is great. I've been listening to them a lot lately.

"Waterloo" and "SOS" are excellent pop songs. "Knowing Me Knowing You" is flat out weird. "Does Your Mother Know?" is very funny to me. "Fernando" is beautiful, if lyrically ridiculous.

I could easily live without "Voulez Vous". And I'm usually no fan of the "Wall of Sound" approach, chiffon, or Swedes, those imperialist bastards. But ABBA was really great, or at least had moments of greatness.

Hearing ABBA really reminds how awful mainstream radio is today.

NOT CRAP

I like them. They have many fine songs, and "Super Trouper" is probably my favorite. NOT CRAP.

Great band, it's utterly flawless perfect pop to the extent that there's something cold and almost paranoid about them at the core.

They have a legion of unlikely fans.

By the way, screw the A*Teens.

As a fan of well-crafted pop music, it'd be ridiculous to give ABBA a crap. Kind of like the REM of Sweden.

I think "Knowing Me, Knowing You" is an absolutely great song, and I get a mild saccharine thrill from a number of other Abba songs when they surprise me on oldies stations. Some may find this embarrassing, but to me it's well worth it to have had all of those pubescent rainy days staring at Agnetha Falkstog's ass on the gatefold sleeves.

Also, the Babylon Dance Band--the greatest musical outfit that the city of Louisville will ever produce--used to do a totally rousing, unironic cover of "SOS," truly a marvel.

Dave Pajo told me a great story once about his dad, Fernando. When the Abba hit of that name was current, Mr. Pajo would crank the car radio whenever it came on and "sing" along, though he only knew one word of the lyric. He would shout, "Yah yah yah yah yah yah, yah yah yah yah, FER-NAN-DO!"

For having inspired that story alone, Abba is NOT CRAP.

The two main bands I have been listening to recently have been The Who and Abba. The Who I revisited after reading certain threads in this very forum, and it has been a revelation. Abba, who I have listened to all my life (and thus are one of the few bands - along with AC/DC and The Beatles - that are as relevant to me now as an adult as they were to me as a child), have emerged as the perfect balance for this Who onslaught.

The two bands compliment each other perfectly. If this seems strange, it's worth thinking about this: Pete Townshend told Bjorn from Abba that SOS was the greatest pop single of all time. This makes a lot of sense to me.

Another interesting thing is the way that both bands are very watchable, perhaps to the point of the musical experience itself being deepened/enhanced by seeing them perform (certainly true in The Who's case - the Isle Of Wight dvd is supremely face melting). I don't listen to complete albums by either band anymore, but repeatedly watch The Kids Are Alright and the Isle of Wight, and Abba's Greatest Hits (which, through its images of the increasingly haunted looking Agnetha, tells quite a tale) and In Concert dvds.

I just keep going from one to the other. It's boss.

I also recently discovered a few Abba songs I didn't previously know, namely Summer Night City, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, and Happy New Year, all of which are very cool tracks.

Abba, in their own weird way, are psychedelic as fuck. Dancing Queen is as perfect as pop gets.

I heard that ABBA was once offered something like ONE BILLION DOLLARS to reunite, but turned it down.

I heard the same. Whatever the true sum offered, to turn it down for nothing other than artistic reasons (Bjorn said it finished for a reason; it wouldn't be the same or as good or right to do it now) - that's a shitload of integrity right there.

FUCK ABBA. BIG CRAP. I bet they play their shit at Ikea.