Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #723663 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

More stories and less opinion, if you don't mind!
I love finding out about music and songs, whether it's pop, classical, musicals or whatever, and I like to know things like who wrote the pieces and what was happening at the time. I also love finding out anything about ABBA, so I thought this would be really good. Well, in places it's okay, but if you're a fan you'll have read all the good stuff either on the sleeve notes of the cd's, or in books like Bright Lights, Dark Shadows.
There's too much 'opinion' and waffle, and not enough information here. And there's lots of pointless descriptions of the tracks. Why do we need to be told what something sounds like? If you've got the song you already know what it sounds like, and if you don't have it you probably don't want to plough through ALL the wasted space telling us that such-and-such instrument begins the intro, before strings take over and then this happens and then Benny starts on the whatever and Agnetha sings a high bit... blah blah blah...?
And all those little snide comments don't help. I have a mind of my own, and I DON'T CARE what the author thinks of a song, I want to know about THE STORIES BEHIND EVERY SONG like the title boasts. And in that way, this books fails by a mile. Take 'The Day Before You Came' which is my second favourite ABBA track. Plenty of quoted lyrics, plenty of 'wry' observations about them... but how about some extra info? Or perhaps something that wasn't in the new sleeve notes of the cd? No way. And that happens over and over again, track after track. Does any ABBA fan care that 'That's Me' wasn't on the same commercial level as 'Dancing Queen'? No. And I don't like sarcasm such as "...if they'd released That's Me instead of Dancing Queen, ABBA would be working in a burger bar now". And why does Bjorn's favourite ABBA track 'prove' he's a strange man? If I wanted personal opinions about the songs, I'd write my own book which would be FULL of them, just like ANYBODY could!!
I would say to people this isn't for fans. It's for people who vaguely remember ABBA, have a compilation or two, and want to laugh at other people's success and creativity. It isn't funny, and it's NOT clever. They were a fabulous group with a mountain of brilliant songs which I love - all of which were done at least seven years before I was born!
The book gets 1 star because there are some pictures of the group which I hadn't seen before.

Thank you for your opinions
This book provides a detailed analysis of Abba's discography song by song and album by album. There is some interesting information for the hardened fan and the more casual browser on the things that influenced this band to write and record their songs in the style that they did. It also includes information on the way that the band was received world-wide, for instance by the record-buying public, in terms of chart success, or otherwise. However, it is difficult to see why the author wrote this book, since his appraisal of some of their songs is at best flippant and at others downright scathing. It is not clear what qualifies Robert Scott to make these judgements. We do not know if he is a musical journalist, expert, or himself a fan, and therefore his book must be regarded as very much his opinion on Abba's work. His close look at the lyrics of many songs may be reading a bit too much into what was, afterall, gentle pop, written by people for whom English was not their first language! Of course the author does rave about a lot of Abba's music and here fans will read what they've always known all along; yet there appears to be no rhyme or reason why he should like some tracks and detest some others. For example he raves about Fernando ("delightful") and loathes Chiquitita ("a maudlin ballad for grannies"). But then we all have our own opinions on music and you may agree with Robert Scott, and you may not. Enjoy the book but don't feel obliged to agree with every word of it.

Misnomer
This book does not tell "the story behind every song" as the cover claims. It is, rather, Scott's own review of *almost* every song. A number of titles like "You Owe Me One" and "I Am The City" - to name but two - are missing in action and suggest that Scott didn't even consult the tracklisting on the band's box set.

The reviews are chaptered by album (focusing on the 2001 re-issues only). There is some lightweight "scene setting" early on - basically, potted histories of the four group members - and some preamble before the individual reviews in each chapter.

As with so many other books purporting to be authorities on ABBA, this is littered with inaccuracies and tedious, regurgitated "factoids". To his credit, Scott has tried to inject some humour into his writing but the results are merely glib and the tone throughout oscillates between sneering and fawning. A comedian he ain't. His instinct to avoid taking his subject too seriously would be laudable if it weren't for the sheer laziness apparent in this book. Sleeve notes appear to have been ignored or, at most, speed-read. He even contradicts himself on a number of occasions: e.g., having acknowledged Benny's decision to quit lyric writing after a few early howlers, he goes on to castigate Benny for lyrics he never wrote. Also, the identity of the lead vocalists on songs is occasionally inaccurate - and sometimes confused within a single paragraph. This kind of information is so easily available that Scott really should be slapped for his laziness.

The blurb makes much of the "rare" photographs used in the book. True, some of them have not previously been published. Mostly, there is a very good reason for that: they are clearly the also-rans from otherwise successful shoots. These "rare shots" catch their subject mid-blink or they are badly composed, images that other picture editors would have bypassed. None of them has any historic value. Even so, it wouldn't have been too difficult to arrange them chronologically to illustrate the period being "discussed" in each chapter but absolutely no effort has been made on that front either. The cover is sloppily designed and the internal layout is dull and dated.

There is virtually nothing on which to recommend this book. Anybody wanting to find out something about ABBA should check the following titles: "Bright Lights, Dark Shadows" (Carl Magnus Palm); "ABBA - The Complete Recording Sessions" (Carl Magnus Palm); "ABBA The Book" (Jean Marie Potiez); "From ABBA to Mamma Mia" (Anders Hanser/Carl Magnus Palm).

ABBA completists should do what I did: find this book in a bargain bin.