Abba—a tribute

By Larry Switzky

Listen to clips from this CD at Planet of Sound.

There was something so beautifully innocent, so naively creepy about ABBA in the '70s. For a group of Swedes dressed in cult robes who sang disposable synth-driven songs with comments about the nature of man like "Money, money, mo-ney/ Kind of funny/ In a rich man's world," they touched our common humanity. Who hasn't put out the lights, stripped to the waist, and imagined they're the "Dancing Queen"?

Apparently, the lame schmucks who assembled this rehash trash. What might have been retro-hip becomes an excuse for obscure foreign singers and pointless group reunions (Bananarama? Why, God?) to capitalize on the ABBA phenomenon. The travesties on Abba--A Tribute include a lachrymose, tuneless country-western rendition of "Knowing Me, Knowing You" by Evan Dando; Peter Cetera and Ronna Reeves oozing out a slimy, colorless, Peabo and Regina-style "SOS"; and Sofia and Michael B. Tretow's ludicrous "Honey, Honey," which samples anything it can get its tentacles on, from other ABBA songs to the cookie monster. E-Rotic redeems the disc at the end with a very faithful "Money, Money, Money," but that hardly makes up for a tribute album that leaves out "Mamma Mia" and can't get "Dancing Queen" right after three tries.

Most of the songs are constructed as pieces of throwaway irony, completely misunderstanding that what made ABBA great (in Europe, anyway) was that they lavished colossal attention on even the cheesiest lyrics and chord structures. Here, we get ersatz dance funk and fruitless re-inventions out of the karaoke night from hell. It all just proves that you can't go Stockholm again. (Relativity)

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