At some point in life, all children just want to close their eyes, make a wish and transform into something else. At some point, every little girl would want to be a princess and every little boy an astronaut.
In the late 70's, quite a few groups entering Eurovision really wanted to be Abba.
Not surprising, given Abba's remarkable success at the ESC itself and even more so afterwards, when conquering the world.
But being Abba takes a little bit more than just being two girls and two guys singing together. As the juries cast their votes, it was time for these acts to wake up and face the music.
(At some point, maybe Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Frida watched the ESC, looked at each other with puzzled facial expressions, thinking to themselves: "is this really what these people think we sound like?")
The Swarbriggs Plus Two - It's Nice To Be In Love Again (Ireland 1977)
Gemini - Dai-li-dou (Portugal 1978)
Nazar - Sevince (Turkey 1978)
The great difference between Abba and these other acts was, that Abba wasn't really two girls and two boys just singing together. They were mostly two girs singing and two boys at the same time playing keyboards and guitar and doing some background vocals.
ReplyDeleteThat made them look very much different from these other groups. On stage Abba never stood four in line singing together (apart from singing "The way old friends do", perhaps).
It seems that these other artists tried to assimilate the image that Abba had in their album covers, not the image they actually had on stage.
However these were fun songs, especially the turkish entry from 1978 is one of my greatest memories from the 1970:s.
Mikko
Oh, I really love these three entries as well (especially Turkey and Portugal 1978 - great choruses, both of them) but they are not Abba.
ReplyDeleteAnd you are quite right - they have all incorporated an Abba detail in their formulas.
In fact, they are much more like Brotherhood of Man than Abba...