ABBA Reimagined Discography For The Pop Music Fan Who Isn't Really Into ABBA

Everyone has a band or two that seems like it should fit comfortably on their emotional/mental playlist but that they just can't get into. I have a few: The Who, Elvis Costello, and ABBA being the ones that spring immediately to mind. I don't dislike any of them enough that I'm likely to skip their track if it shows up on a random playlist, but I never feel like I'm looking forward to their music.

I thought, of the three, ABBA was the one I could most likely sift through their discography for an album of music I liked. I was not mistaken.

This is nowhere near a Greatest Hits album. I don't like a lot of their hits. They released twenty-three singles in the 70s and 80s. Six of them appear here, and two of them are heavily edited. I didn't really reach into their B-Side catalogue but I listened to each of their albums a few times, and found some gems that didn't sound as bland as their hits but we're definitely recognizable as ABBA.

I find that much of their material reeks of the filler music from rock musicals. Either spare ballads choking with loneliness in the lyrics but almost blandly sung or wildly overproduced orchestral pop that buries the vocals in the mix. I tried not to include (m)any of those songs on this album. I wanted to reward them for those times that they took musical risks that paid off. A tropical themed lovesong, a funk song about a creepy old rich guy, a hand clappy punk song. 

Of course Dancing Queen is on here, and a few other songs that I imagine everyone who's ever heard of ABBA, and a few who haven't, have heard before. But this is mostly ABBA stretching their wings and playing out of their 1970s AM radio comfort zone.

I was going to include stuff off their reunion album but then I listened to it. There weren't any risks taken.

I'm calling this album The 1980's Theater Tech Kids Backstage Makeout Playlist somewhat ironically. It's what I would call the album filled with all the popular ABBA songs that I didn't include on this reimagined album, and ABBA Spreads Its Wings just sounds like a predictably 1970s ABBA album. 

1. Of course, if there's a track that begins with clockwork, or just the ticking of seconds passing, and the song is good, I'm probably going to use it as an opening track. For this album, that track is Like An Angel Passing Through My Room. It's almost a Bonnie Tyler ballad with the edges sanded off of her vocals. It's almost a 20th Century Disney ballad. It's the kind of track that you'd think would just be one verse, but it does go to a second one without overstaying its welcome. It's incredibly well-produced as a music box song. If you'd told me it was off their reunion album from 2021, I'd believe you, as it has a wistful nostalgia to it.

2. As the clock continues to tick down, we move to another really well-produced track. This one is a very 80's tropical cheesy dance number, though it was recorded in 1974. It seems so soaked in a Hawaiian shirt, that I'd have sworn it came out ten years later. Sitting In The Palm Tree is one of the rare tracks that I'm including with Björn on lead vocals.

3. Lay All Your Love On Me is the first track that, to me, sounds Totally ABBA. Unlike the first two tracks, this one pops up on their Greatest Hits collections. It's overly orchestrated with a disco beat and the weirdly uninteresting and uninterested vocals that I associate the band with. But this one is bright and poppy enough and, again, like many ABBA songs, sounds to me like it came off the Hair Soundtrack. It was clearly influential on Ace Of Base and Madonna. It could have easily been an overly produced remix track from Like On A Prayer.

4. The last track ends on applause, which makes it easy for me to do an edit. Look, the rise to the excellent chorus of Fernando is exquisite. And, it's nice that is isn't just a bland love song. But the song is too long for me, so I spliced out the first verse and chorus so that you only get the best parts of the track. I have no regrets about this. 

5. Nina Pretty Ballerina begins with a train whistle is early early days ABBA. It's silly pop but there is slightly more emotion in the vocals than in later tracks. And it's just a fun song about an office worker who dances her heart out on weekends. I'd put it on-par with a Beatles B-side. The football style audience chants during the song help propel it into my heart.

6. While on the subject of office workers living out fantasies, Anni-Frid gets the bouncy anti-capitalist ditty, Money, Money, Money. This could have definitely come off an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical from before he started wholesale plagiarizing other artists while calling himself a composer.  Allegedly.

7. The Visitors is easily my favorite ABBA album. It's a little darker, it's got tight 80s production, and you can tell the band is going through the kind of turmoil tha turns out albums like Fleetwood Mac's Rumors. This track also has some early Genesis prog rock vibes with a deliberately flat tonality that also has late Beatles vibes but with a hand clappy 80s chorus.

8. Another of ABBA's Greatest Hits wildly edited. I really don't like Mamma Mia. It's breakdown is So Excellent, but everything around it I find forgettable. So you get one verse, one breakdown, one chorus, and a fadeout, which is all you really need from it. 

9. On the flipside you get the full version of another Tropical Loveland song. It's definitely more recognizable as an ABBA song but it's also got that soft rock colonialism We Sailed Our Ship To This Island Once So Its Musical Cultural Is Now Ours feel to it. It's a very bouncy ooooooooooooooooh song.

10. The halfway point of the album happens at the crux of tracks 10 and 11, so you're welcome to think of SOS as the end of Side A. Though it would be a better start to Side B. This is one of their hits, and I understand why. This is another case of a song that's a bit over-orchestrated. It's a little too dense to be fun. But it's still catchy. 

11. And look, I really don't think you can have an ABBA album without Dancing Queen. This was the first track I heard by them, and realized I'd heard it covered several times before I ever heard the original. It could easily be creepy, being a song about how attractive a teenager is. If one of the men sang this, it could be on Ephebophilia Top Forty (don't look that up). Instead, it's a woman seeing a little bit of herself in the beautiful girl on the dance floor. Much more palatable.  This also suffers from overproduction but the piano chops through the noise just enough to be endearing.

12. When All Is Said And Done marches out of the fadeout from the previous track. It's a closing time song with a good hook, and one of those cool 70s songs where the music flashes into a sort of breakdown where there's still a ton of noise around the vocals but it's ... less noise than in the rest of the song. 

13. I love funk. At my last retail job, the owner was also really into funk, so our store played funk all the time, and it was glorious. The bass here is completely 100% funk certified. Man In The Middle is another song that drops the age "seventeen" but isn't creepy, as it's about watching a rich guy who loves to be in the spotlight. 

14. We leave funkytown for Italy and more orchestral grandeur, this time with 80s country style vocals. This Italy is funkytown adjacent, though, as it also has a shiny 70s bassline. One Of Us isn't a folky song about possibly seeing God on a bus, but a lyrically bland song about how love is sad that rhymes lying with crying. 

15. King Kong Song is the crunchiest song on this album. Heavy (for Abba) guitars and the vocals having a punk wall of sound quality in the background while the actual background vocals are pitched into the foreground with a doo-wop style. It's a wild, dumb ride with an almost Queen sort of hand clap percussion. It's got definite Banana Splits vibes.

16. If you've ever been trapped in an elevator on the way to a job interview, you've probably heard something that sounded remarkably like My Mama Said. I know that sounds like a diss, but there's something appealing about this song, whcih also has vocals that are absolutely buried in the mix for no reason. 

17. Why Joan Jett hasn't released a cover of Hey Hey Helen, I'll never know. Maybe she thought it would be redundant? There is a funk breakdown near the end of this song that makes virtually no sense, as it's otherwise as new wave punk rock as ABBA ever gets.

18. Returning to the bright and bouncy technopop from earlier on this album, Head Over Heels is another song where I can't tell you why I like it more than most other ABBA songs. It's mostly the squeaky clean production.

19. A whispery Every Musical In The 80s and 90s vocal drags us into the piano an ooooooh ballad, Kisses Of Fire, that then slams us into pop. It's a perfect transition. Something about this song makes me want to hear Lizzo cover it. It doesn't sound like a Lizzo song at all, and there isn't a flute solo or anything, I just think this song is due for another single release, and I think she'd spin it in a fantastic direction.

20. ABBA has precisely one banger in their arsenal. One perfect song from beginning to end, and it's Take A Chance On Me. Every piece of this musical puzzle fits snugly together from the disco vocals to the occasional doo-wop background vocals to the occasional spoken line, it's just expertly crafted. No other song by the band can possibly follow it, so we let it fade the album out.