Friday, May 24, 2019

Song of the Day: 'When I Kissed the Teacher' by ABBA


Not sure if this requires a mea culpa or not, but here goes: Like most Gen Xers, I'm a lifelong ABBA fan. I grew up loving their hit singles and enjoyed seeing them on television and later on MTV. In 1982, I raced out to buy Frida's "I Know There's Something Going On" -- which would later be my anthem when my first boyfriend began a series of affairs behind my back -- and fell in love with the Swedish foursome all over again -- my, my! -- when "Mama Mia" was artfully used in "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." 


(That's when every gay guy in America god "Gold" on CD, making it one of the biggest-sellers of all time!) 

But as much as I loved them, they were never my Blondie or my Pretenders. So it was only with my newfound streaming lifestyle did I finally hear their eight studio albums in their entirety -- and what journey it's been!

Before I voice any thoughts, I was wondering if ABBA was your version of my Blondie or Matt Rettenmund's Madonna? I'm still just getting knee deep in the material -- cannot believe the #AntiMeToo anthem "When I Kissed the Teacher" was actually a song much less a minor hit single! -- and would love some tutelage from a die-hard fan! 

2 comments:

Claude Remains said...

OMG!! I can't imagine my life without ABBA! I was obssessed with them.I had their posters on my bedroom walls and I made my parents take me to see "ABBA:The movie" when it came out!!!

James Greenlee said...

I could have hooked you up a couple of years ago. I knew, quite possibly, the world's biggest ABBA fan. He was my husband's best friend, both of them flight attendants for United, they'd even bought houses next to each other when I met them. His name was Mark, and to say ABBA was his Blondie is underselling it. He had every foreign language version of every song they did, every import, every format, all the videos. . .EVERYTHING. When he passed away last year, we inherited all of it.

My favorite thing is the unreleased track, "Just Like That," which exists in a couple of half-finished versions. I think it definitely would have been a hit. And my favorite part about it, is that I was a real shit, and sang the wrong lyrics on purpose (instead of "he found a temporary home in my flat," I sang, "he found a temperamental gnome in my flat"), and he couldn't listen to it without singing it wrong after that!

Get Thank You For the Music, the box set, to get all of that and a lot more. Allegedly, they're releasing new songs this year. I like to think Mark had something to do with that.