ABBA – "Knowing Me Knowing You"

The Arrival album was Abba’s Rubber Soul; a musical and emotional crossroads which could either entice the group back into their old ways – the very silly MoR bubblegum of “When I Kissed The Teacher” and “Dum Dum Diddle” – or lead them into pop’s future; if “Dancing Queen” were the hardest of acts to follow, it should be pointed out that on Arrival it is followed by the breathtakingly beautiful and epic “My Love, My Life,” possibly Agnetha’s finest solo vocal performance – certainly up there with its gruelling sequel, “The Day Before You Came” – surrounded by ectopic strata of those sounds of a heaven which Brian Wilson would have been proud to inhabit.

But creating a future for pop might necessitate negating their own future, as people, as couples; “Money Money Money” is Abba’s first really cynical song, and it was appropriately given to the darker, less reassuring voice of Frida. That same voice provides the chill which still possesses the power to shock in “Knowing Me, Knowing You”; the summer paradise of “Dancing Queen” has given way to a blasted heath of autumnal, miles and miles of space in between those echoed electric piano chords, breaths which may be both real and synthesised, and that 1968 phasing which they may have been among the last pop acts to use without irony.

Is this the entry of the Devil? Frida sings, with a detached, near inhuman surface tone but rage evident beneath, aggressively isolated groups of two syllables in two triplets – six, six , six – “No more. Care-free. Laugh-ter. Si-lence. E-ver. Af-ter.” This is followed by a more aggrieved, almost hysterical widening of the emotional picture: “Walking through an empty house, tears in my eyes,” and then, “Here is where the story ends. This is goodbye.” The final syllable hangs on to the final chord like a desperate patient clinging their oxygen pump, and the music stops, suddenly and starkly.

“Knowing me, knowing you (uh-huh)/There is nothing we can do,” the cold rationalist chorus asserts, already treating this collapsed affair as a post mortem. Male and female voices overlap with yet more ’60s memes (“Breaking up is never easy I know”) but the conclusion is irrevocable, “But I have to go. Knowing me, knowing you, it’s the best I can do,” sung in a manner which dares you to consider what the worse options might have been.

In the second verse Frida the singer and Frida the thinker wrestle with their recollections of this love (“Good days” drifts into “Bad days” like a conscience warding off the Romanticist), and again the days of 1968 pop melodrama are recalled (“In these old familiar rooms/Children would play”) – but this is the kind of lyric, and indeed the type of song, which only could have been a product of the disappointed, emotionally and physically bereaved ’70s (think back to Carly Simon’s “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” from 1971, already so cynical about and wary of any future, and view this as the final part of a trilogy, the second part being either “You’re So Vain” or “S.O.S.”).

Again, in rather pallid company – this is the first 1977 number one to be set above ballad tempo, if only just – the invention and stark candour of Abba’s records put everything else around them to shame. But there is still that reluctant looking back over the shoulder of early ’70s rock; the guitar line following the chorus could have been taken from “January,” and I wonder whether such an artfully constructed song might have done better to have no guitars at all. Their next number one would solve that dilemma rather magically.

Sadly it reminds me more of an unfortunate precursor to “When I Kissed The Teacher” by Tory Busted which wasn’t a number one so leave it out, SB…

“this time we’re through. We’re Really Through”

With this song, Abba became as good as their fans said they were.

Though I know that ‘Dancing Queen’ is technically Abba’s greatest achievement (not in the cold sense) this is my actual favourite record of theirs. The way Frida and Agnetha’s voices come at you on the chorus always made me think it was a very angry, bitter and pissed-off record, and the icy production gives it a really bleak edge. All that Kierkegaard and Bergman probably.

I still don’t get the Abba-worship thing.

Making Partridge a MT fan wouldn’t work because they would be far too sophisticated for him. But making him an Abba fan doesn’t really do Abba any favours.

If you’d asked me before we reached the days of Abba I’d have been ready to woman the barricades against the coming onslaught for the populists, but I’m a tad disappointed to find that, while there’s undoubtedly an onslaught, it’s a small one and looks a bit petty from here.

In the absence of a “very well then, alone!” battle, I feel bereft of anything new to say about this latest episode in the Saga, beyond that it’s the thoroughly well-put-together and enjoyable piece of undemanding yet stimulating pop that we’d already come to expect from them. And that was always Abba’s problem, as it was once for the Beatles.

Just on the “Arrival” album, what do people think about Abba albums? There is a part of me that would love to explore the more esoteric treasures that never made it as singles, but I have picked up the idea that apart from the singles, Abba albums are all filler.

‘I Am The City’ the sole song from the abortive comeback attempt, as featured on ‘More ABBA Gold’, takes this idea to its logical conclusion where the sense of individual character is subsumed into identification with a city.

Once you’re done with the good Abba b-sides, try their shocking folk medley (possibly on the b-side of Summer Night City, but not sure) Pick A Bale Of Cotton has to be heard to be believed.

On a completely different Abba tangent altogether, Mark Eitzel does a fantastic version of The Winner Takes It All – but, alas, it only exists in my head. Especially on the “But tell me does he kiss…” bit.

Or “Going In With My Flies Open” as we used to call it.

They do this best – sombre verses and uplifting choruses. One reason I never liked Dancing Queen. Knowing Me is near their best and certainly brought me back on board (albeit temporarily). The uh-huhs are the worst part though and Coogan was right to lampoon them. I find with almost all ABBA records the element of Euro cheeze is never too far below the surface and so it is with this one (also in the multitracked guitar interludes). Having said that the verses are so good I can easily forgive them. Icily compelling. A decent 7 from me.

#20 Yes the b-side of the splendid SNC is indeed the horrendous folk medley and goes a long way to undo some of the good made by the a-side.

The harmonies on the chorus blow my mind.

Man.

I looked down on ABBA a bit until this song, which knocked me out. It knocked Elvis Costello out too. I saw him do a terrific version of it on the Wheel of Fortune residency at (I think) the Dominion in London, and he played it at the famous Glastonbury (89?) show where he did an acoustic set then suddenly produced the Attractions for a 45 minute encore. So Steve Coogan couldn’t put me off either. Actually, I like Steve Coogan, we’re going to see him in October.

re Billy at comment 15, I think there are better examples. George Jones’s A Good Year For The Roses features, among other lines, the narrator noticing “the sight of lipstick on the cigarettes there in the ashtray” and “a lip-print on a half-filled cup of coffee that you poured and didn’t drink” after his wife walks out on him.

The “Uh-huh’s” remind me of the responses from the lead singer’s friends during the spoken intro to the Shangri-La’s “Leader of the Pack.” For that reason, this record seems like an adult’s version of the operatic teen Death Rock songs of the early 1960s, with the “death” in question here being a marriage (or two). What the early 1960s New Yorkers and the late 1970s Swedes share is a love of finely detailed Pop as a vehicle for grand passion.

British TV culture has in fact produced two Alan Partridges; the broadcaster whose story should maybe have ended in Norfolk (since the last series when everything works out for him is awful) and the Brookside character of the early-mid eighties, last viewed staggering around Brookside Close and howling at the moon like a Scouse Lear.

er, lear

Been away for a week or so, and my goodness you’ve been cracking on with this, Tom, haven’t you? A couple of thoughts:

This was a stately rather than lively piece of work, wintry in tone as well as its video (quite surprising to recall that it was number one in springtime). Not one of my very favourites, but as usual chock-full of quality moments – the boys’ backing vocal “this time I know…” particularly effective. I think it was this backing line that French and Saunders had in mind with their glorious spoof “C’est La Vie” (“c’est good for you, c’est bad for me – quite definitely”).

Reading the thread I’ve been struck by how much it reminds me of the day in May last year when I left my Mum’s house for the last time, having cleared it after her funeral. Walking through the empty house… etc. Obviously the setting was different from the theme of the song, but much of the lyric still applies. It was her widowhood bungalow rather than the house I grew up in, but children – mine – had still played in the old familiar rooms. In those moments before closing the door I thought – it might be a cliché to think of spectral voices at a time like this, but they do echo in your head, which is why it’s a cliché.

To lighter matters: Abba (it’s surely a matter of choice whether you write ABBA in capitals or not, but it does cause me irrational annoyance when people do) played shows in the UK around this time, and Record Mirror’s review began something like this:
“It was the talking point of the night. Everybody around me was amazed by it, some said it was the most extraordinary thing they’d ever seen. It’s Anna’s bum we’re talking about…”
Boy, did that generate some hate mail! But yes, many years before J-Lo this was a talking point wherever they went, to the extent that Agnetha remarks in “Abba The Movie”: “Don’t they have bottoms in Australia?”

Oh! The Placemats were my fantasy primitivist/DIY/post-punk/art-rock band, inspired by Devo/Pere Ubu/The Residents/Desperate Bicycles, whose limited edition cassette release Rowing Across The Chesterfield Canal With The Placemats (Boots own brand, 1978) was a ground-breaking classic of the genre. Oh yes.

There is an inner bleakness in this study of domestic upheaval. It’s been covered a lot on this thread, but I happen to notice listening to the guitars especially, that here is a pre-cursor to what messrs Morrisey and Marr were going to perfect 7 years hence. The guitar interludes here are a joy to behold, a glam-pop thrill-ride, that provides balance to the devastation of Frida’s walk through a broken home. Not really Morrissey territory, but if his wry take on teen alienation and boredom is half a generation away from ABBA’s adult marital breakdown and existential crisis, then you could imagine an older Morrissey tackling those themes also.

Oh, and just reading through the comments now, no one has mentioned this wonderful song’s brilliant bass-line. It’s definitely up there in my view, with the bass-line in Michael Jackson’s ‘Rock with you’ as doing the seemingly impossible: be incredibly driving and also very melodic, and yet be so bedded into the song’s structure and played *so* in-the-pocket that you almost can’t hear it most of the time.

Also, I loved comment 5 from Will above:
By this stage Abba really were our generation’s version of the Beatles… every single would sound different but still indisputably themselves
Bingo. Yes. That’s exactly how it felt, and what continues to impress all these years later.

#15: the breakfast table makes another appearance in One Man One Woman, another album track which had the quality to be a single.

Another Partridge/Abba connection: his son, mentioned but never seen, was named Fernando. I can imagine Alan thinking of himself as tremendously sophisticated and continental to have chosen the name.

This might just be my favourite of Abba’s number ones. It seems to consist of short, apparently throwaway words and phrases, but the group alchemise them into a wall of emotion. The very best bit of the song for me comes just after ‘children would play’.