Return of the fabulous four
Lifelong Abba fan and Mamma Mia! star Jackie Clune explains why we should be overjoyed that the Swedish superstars are making music again
AS A lifelong Abba fan – and having toured the world for three years as the lead in the smash hit Abba musical, Mamma Mia! – I am no less than thrilled that Abba have announced they are back together.
The Swedish fab four have recorded two new songs, their first new material in 35 years, and will be “touring” next year in a stage show using digital projections of the band members – or “Abbatars”.
This is huge. This is better than Elvis, The Beatles and Bowie all rising, reforming and playing an intimate unplugged gig in my back garden.
I know it’s not cool. I know that, critically, their nine number one hits between 1974 and 1980 were met with disdain, and that living as an out-of-the-closet lover of Abba during the 1970s was death to your cred forever; you might as well have popped on a nylon kaftan and torched yourself on your own fondue. But I don’t care – my love of their music has since been vindicated by the huge and enduring success of their songs.
It’s now in order to love Abba. When I was in Mamma Mia!, it was like dishing out musical Prozac to every audience we met. From Munich to Manchester, Cape Town to Copenhagen, Bangkok to Baden-Baden, the crowds would go wild with a kind of nostalgic hysteria. Even the most reserved audiences would be up dancing, singing along and grinning from ear to ear.
In Kuala Lumpur on Christmas Day, we performed to a majority Muslim crowd, and it was the most joyous thing to see all the women in their white hijabs waving their arms in the air at the finale.
I knew Abba were going to be huge the moment I saw them on the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974. It’s hard to say exactly what I loved the most – the song, Waterloo, which I got to sing decades later hundreds of times; Agnetha’s sky-blue crochet beanie hat and silver platform boots combo; or Anni-Frid’s handkerchief hem and bubble perm. They were just fabulous. It was no surprise to me when they won, and went on to dominate the pop charts for the next six years.
They had a fabulous image – one Barbie-doll blonde, one auburn sexpot – with two geniuses behind them, pumping out hit after hit. The songwriting was superb, and it goes without saying that the songs have stood the test of time. There is still no better floor-filler at a wedding than Dancing Queen, which somehow captures in three-and-ahalf heady minutes that “it’s the weekend!” sense of liberation and youthful possibility we all felt on a Friday night (“and the lights are low...”).
As a singer, I never tire of Abba songs. From the first few spinetingling bars of I Have a Dream, which opens Mamma Mia!, to the stomping megamix finale, it was pure pleasure to perform. The challenge of banging out 12 massive songs, eight times a week, filled me with respect for Anni-Frid and Agnetha; the range, tone and quality of their voices was first class. Theirs were big (platform) boots to fill.
I worshipped Anni-Frid and Agnetha. The year after I left Mamma Mia!, I appeared in the West End production of Billy Elliot.
One night after the show, the company manager knocked on my door saying she had a guest who’d just seen the show and wanted to meet me.
In walked Anni-Frid. I was totally gobsmacked.
I think I started shaking. She was so calm and polite, and she told me she knew I had been in Mamma Mia! and wanted to know what it was like to have to belt out the massive power ballad The Winner Takes It All, night after night.
I burbled something about breath control, vocal placement and shouting at pitch, before blurting out: “But what was it like for you?”
There was the most dignified of pauses before she very sweetly said: “I don’t know... it was Agnetha that sang that one.”
I nearly died. I KNEW that. I was just so nervous! I still blush thinking about it.
So as Abba return for a virtual tour in the new year – digitally retouched to make them look just like they did in 1979 – we should all take a moment, crack out the Lycra and feel the joy.
Once again, we can be young and sweet, only 17.