Scrotnig is a rightard nutjob and an out and out liar ✅
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JUL
05
2013
The Fork Me 7" vinyl collection thread
ABBA - SOS
(Single, Epic, 1975, S EPC 3576)
A SOS
B Man In The Middle
Abba were quality. Did they do a weak track? I can't think of one.
This was the first big hit after Waterloo, the third single from their third album, and the only record in the charts ever to have palindromes both for artist and title.
Contray to popular opinion, Abba's worldwide success wasn't instant, and their links to my life are becoming a bit odd, the more I look into them! All four of them played in different acts (all having some success in Sweden - Benny's group, The Hep Stars were known throughout the 60s as the Swedish Beatles) to each other in the 60s, although they know each other, in 1970, Benny and Bjorn recorded a single as a duet and the girls occasionally sang backing vocals. The two couples went on holiday together in Cyprus later that year, and starting singing as a quartet on the beach, just for a laugh. They ended up performing a proper show for UN soldiers on the island. They decided to release an album together and their first Swedish hit single came in 1971, although they hadn't come up with the Abba name yet and it was released as Bjorn and Benny.
They continued to work together, both as a duo and as a songwriting partnership (a song they wrote came 3rd in the 1972 ESC). The first proper single as a quartet was Ring Ring (credited to Bjorn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frijd) in 1973, recorded using a wall of sound technique it set what was to become the trademark Abba sound. They put the name Abba together later that year. Ring Ring was a hit in much of Europe but failed to break the lucrative English speaking market, that came in 1974 with Waterloo.
Their first European tour after Waterloo didn't do very well, shows were cancelled and hardly any sold out. They became labelled for a while as a one hit wonder. The Waterloo album (their second) did well in Scandinavia, but barely scraped the top 40 in the UK, and got to only 145 in the US chart. Abba, the next album, did slightly better reaching the top 30 in the UK (but did even worse in the US, reaching 174). It wasn't until their 4th album (Arrival) that they got the guarranteed number 1s all over the world.
There were 6 singles, all of which flopped in the UK between Waterloo and this! After SOS, they didn't fail with anything that they released, so maybe THIS was the breakthrough single, not Waterloo.
Despite it's catchyness, lyrically it's a sad song about fading love.
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