The 500 - #179 - The Definitive Collection - ABBA

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #179
Album Title: The Definitive Collection
Artist: ABBA

Genre: Euro-Pop

Recorded: 1972 - 1982

Released: November, 2021

My age at release: 37
How familiar was I with it before this week: Quite

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #303, dropping 124 spots
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Dancing Queen

Recently, my mother, a retired senior citizen, commented that time was moving too rapidly for her liking. She looked at me earnestly and said, "The weeks go by like days for me now." It was easy to sympathize. Time does not move quite so quickly for me, but the years certainly seem to be flying by. Heck, we are already a quarter century into the 2000s. It sometimes feels like the 1990s were just a few years ago.

Experts agree that our perception of time is flexible and subjective. Time seems to speed up as we age because we have fewer new experiences and our perception of them becomes less vivid. In a September, 2024, article promoting his book Time Expansion Experiences,  Psychologist Steve Taylor "There is a strong link between time perception and information processing. The more information our minds process, the slower time seems to pass."

It is a phenomenon I often recognize with the students with whom I work. Indeed, I am envious of their excitement at events in their lives -- birthdays, holidays, sleepovers and sports. Even an upcoming trip to the mall assumes a level of significance beyond what the occasion calls for. Their unfiltered and intense perception of the world is marvelous to witness. Meanwhile, I have progressively become more desensitized to experiences which, sadly, speeds up time.

Oh, to recapture  the exhilaration of hearing a new song, especially one released by a  favourite artist. Yet, while the anticipation, joy and pleasure of a new record remains, the intensity and passion I experienced in my youth has faded. Which brings me to the first time I heard Dancing Queen from the Swedish pop group ABBA. I was in the backseat of a car driven by a hockey teammate's mom, clipping toward the ice rink in Kingsville, Ontario. I was 11 when it played on the car radio in the fall of 1976.

 I had never heard anything like it. The song's clever construction, opening with a glissando on the piano keys followed by a 14-bar chorus, rather than the first verse, washed over me like a rainbow. The groovy disco beat, the mesmerizing synthesizer blending sublimely with the female vocal harmonies, and incredibly catchy piano stabs had me riveted to the car’s upholstery. Later, I learned that the chorus resolves on a sustained A chord, the key the song was written in – so satisfying.  

 ABBA comprised the  unique confluence of talents of brilliant songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, and the extraordinarily talented vocalists Agnetha Fältskog  and Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad. The group takes their name from the first initials of their first names, arranged into a palindrome -- a word or phrase that reads the same backwards and forwards.

A Book of palindromes, including my favourite 
"Go Hang A Salami, I'm A Lasagna Hog".

The quartet were Sweden's first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 with the song Waterloo. Eurovision is an international song competition organized annually by the European Broadcasters Union. It has been held every year since 1956, with the exception of 2020 when it was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. In 2005, during Eurovision's 50th Anniversary Celebration, Waterloo was declared the best song in the competition's history.

ABBA in 1974; (l-r) Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad, 
Agnetha Fältskog, and Björn Ulvaeus

The Definitive Collection is a compilation record released in 2001. It contains all the singles performed by the group between 1972 and 1979, including Waterloo and Dancing Queen. Taking another listen this week for this blog was a delightful trip down memory lane, reminding me how much I adored ABBA as a kid, memorizing almost every song. However, when hearing Dancing Queen, the emotional thrill that I felt 48 years ago was somehow subdued. The song still gets the feet tapping but the euphoric sensation was evasive. 

Then I reflected on the lyrics. It is a song about a 17-year-old girl who gets lost in the music when she dances at a club on a Friday night. It is told from the perspective of an observer who watches her "feel the beat" and "have the time of her life" as she "dances and jives". She, like the young people in my world (and 11 year old me), is caught up in the liberation and excitement of this experience.

What about 59-year old me? 

Is that liberation and excitement gone forever? 

Will my weeks turn into days as they have for my mom?

Steve Taylor concludes his article with the following advice:

"There are certain things we can do to resist the process of time speeding up. The most obvious is to keep introducing newness into our lives – for example, by travelling to new places, learning new hobbies, and meeting new people. Alternately -- and perhaps more effectively – we can also slow down time by living mindfully, paying conscious attention to our day-to-day experiences of seeing, hearing and feeling."

That's a perfect goal for this new year. Maybe I'll even hit the dancefloor at the club.