Bottom 20 ABBA songs

He is Your Brother
Disillusion
King Kong Song
Sitting in the Palmtree
Me and Bobby and Bobby's Brother

Hey Hey Helen
Rock Me
Crazy World
Medley
Dum Dum Diddle

That's Me
When I Kissed the Teacher
Does Your Mother Know
I Have a Dream
Two for the price of One


Should I Laugh or Cry
Under Attack
You Owe me One
I am the City
Little Things

I can’t reach the 20 mark

But in no particular order, I’m not a big fan of:

I saw it in the mirror
You owe me one
I am just a girl
Should I laugh or cry
That’s me
Lay all your love on me
Bumblebee
Put on you white sombrero
What about Livingstone
As good as new
Sitting in the palm tree
Man in the middle

Probably not "interesting" as I don't think there's any shocks in it. That's Me is probably in the "quite like" list for most fans - not really hate - or love.

DDD has indeed a great melody but those lyrics.

When I Kissed the Teacher has dodgy lyrics along with I am Just a Girl which you referenced and of course Does Your Mother Know - and I *stll* argue I Can Be That Woman. They'd all be in my Bottom 25.

The intro of Does Your Mother Know is great and so also instrumental breaks - but the vocals and lyrics especially, OMG.

Too young to have sex (at least a recognition) but not too young to "flirt a little maybe" "dance with you honey". Eeeeek! These aren't 2023 lyrics.

Actually maybe those songs should have been in my Bottom 20.

Maybe this is not the most suitable place for this post, but it seems relevant to me.

I wonder how much lyrics matter in our rating of a song?

For me, DDD is so tuneful that it just about manages to override the weird lyrics (for a pop song) about an obsessive fiddler

Apart from the seemingly suspect opening line, in the context of the rest of its lyrics, Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen doesn't strike me as objectionable - especially not if grandfathers and teenage girls' innocent comments to the song on YouTube carry any weight

More generally, if one became fussy about some of the trite, lazy lyrics - imo - of probably many successful pop songs, those songs might be lowly regarded on those grounds alone - and never mind the music! But the melody, arrangement and vocal sound will often take precedence over the meaning of the lyrics, I think. Well, they often do for me, anyway. But I'm not referring to obviously nasty, unedifying lyrics, of course.

For me, Honey Honey is lyrically cringeworthy - "I heard about you before and I wanted to know some more. You're a love machine!" And Bjorn's heavy breathing as the cherry topping the tasteless cake.

A few years later Björn opted for a more subtle approach with the lyrics to Andante Andante. 😀

I’m not a big fan of DYMK but I think they released the right version. It’s harder hitting.

People seem to be forgetting Åh, Vilka Tider. Surely that has to be the worst ABBA song? And not just because it’s only in Swedish.

Mine from over two years ago, from this same topic. Not changed in that time, though if I could have 22, I’d add Just A Notion and Little Things. If I can only have 20, I’d probably take out Does Your Mother Know and Head Over Heels.

I always forget Ah, Vilka Tildr and Merry Go Round and Santa Rosa too. All awful.

On reflection maybe I was a bit harsh to have That's Me in my list.

Gary, I love My Mama Said, it is in my Top 20 ABBA songs!

You really, don't like Voyage, do you? I don't listen to it now. There's only a few songs, 4 max that I really like and 2 or 3 I can't stand.

Yes, it is a pity she only got those two in terms of the main (Polar-released) singles. Frida got, by far, the best leads on The Visitors but none of them were among the main two singles.

I was expecting more than four songs from Voyage in gary’s list! If this was a list of 20 songs I could live without ever hearing again, I’m afraid I would put all ten from Voyage into it. That’s unfair and harsh, I know, but the fact is they will never hold the same place in my affections as the main bulk of ABBA’s output which I first heard in the late 1970s and early 80s. The other ten I could just about make up from the worst of my bottom 20, but I’d struggle. Sorry Voyage. You may be ABBA 40 years on but you’re not my childhood ABBA!

No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that my “bottom 20 songs” would be different from “20 songs I could live without ever hearing again”. In other words, if someone said that I had to give up 20 ABBA songs - never hear them again - or die now, then I’d take the first option.

I’d put all of Voyage in this category simply because those songs are new, and haven’t been with me for 40-odd years. No fault of their own, but part of ABBA’s continuing appeal for me is that I can still listen to, for example, The Name of the Game and be transported back to 1977 and hearing it on hospital radio in my hospital bed. Every song off every album has a nostalgic place in my heart. Voyage will never be able to do that, or at least not in the same way.

In terms of bottom 20, there’s really just Little Things and Just A Notion from Voyage that I’d put in.

To put it into further context, I might even be tempted to put Dancing Queen in a list of songs I could live without ever hearing again. This would simply be because I’ve heard it too much. And perhaps a few other well-known singles that are a little over-exposed.

Would anyone else’s Bottom 20 and 20 they could live without ever hearing again also be different?

I'm guessing most ABBA fans would disagree with you, Johnny, about such a number of 'below par' ABBA songs; but I don't! But then I feel that same way about my other favourite groups, too, including The Beatles, The Beach Boys', Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, and others. For me, it's partly because my musical tastes and preferences haven't stood still over the decades (whose have, I wonder?), and so a lot of tracks from these artists that I once liked, I no longer do. It's difficult to pin down and very subjective. But I can appreciate how artists may be more critical of their work than many of their fans are.

Well said...

I know we tend to be hyper critical, and Voyage gets some bashing at times, but I guess that's why we are " fans"
I just remember waiting for so long Living in that eternal hope, and thank God it happened and with the potential of a few more tracks to come.

Yes of course there are tracks I don't like and probably never liked, but am I grateful, yes, as these mostly early tracks lead to the greatness of tracks that we love today.

I must be the odd one out because any nostalgic feelings I might have had for the music of my early teens seem to have got overridden by my musical tastes and preferences subsequently! But I can well appreciate how songs can get associated with the heightened periods in one's life - including the bad times, unfortunately, when such an association might be unwelcome and resented, even if the songs are deemed by the person to be a good ones.

I'm intrigued by the occasional comment on YouTube from someone who says something like, "I'm 13 and I prefer pop music from before I was born". I think I read such a comment regarding 'Eye In The Sky' (1982) by The Alan Parsons Project. If true, when someone like this becomes much older, maybe they will acquire, retrospectively, a fond nostalgia for music that didn't appeal to them in their early teens.

In the light of all this, for me Voyage is just another album by ABBA - a welcome, belated one - but not as good as what went before.

I agree. It's a risky view if anyone doesn't want to be accused of being old and out of touch. And it depends on what you consider constitutes a good song. I happen to think the pop songs of previous eras were generally better-written in terms of structure, underlying harmony, melody...

I'm not saying there aren't such songs being written today, but it's less obvious to me. But I think those of us who have this negative view of today's pop have a great example of how it was done better - ABBA, of course! Some of their songs might be regarded as 'dated', but that's a term that doesn't mean much to me.

I agree with what I read that Elton John said a few years ago: that previous pop was "obviously better" than today's.

I suppose the number of people who appear to have been 70+ at the the Voyage show makes sense: contemporaries of the ABBA members in terms of age.

Do you mean officially or unofficially? I’ve long suspected that if books can be ghost-written* then songs certainly can. Looking at Ed Sheeran’s latest album on Wikipedia, I can’t see many official co-writers but there’s probably many unofficial ones.

[*David Walliams and loads of other famous people that claim to be writing books for children. Did they really? Why wouldn’t they be ghost-written? The celebrity benefits, as does the ghost-writer. Far more will be read if it appears to have a famous name writing it. Same for pop stars - they can look far more talented than they really are].