Abba, The Day Before You Came

 By the time Abba put out their last single, The Day Before You Came, it was all over. That was a great shame because, having built a world-dominating career on some brilliant pop trash, they became more inward-looking, more or less like Sweden's answer to Fleetwood Mac, making classic pop music out of relationship dysfunction, did Knowing Me, Knowing You and One of Us, before delivering this masterpiece, in the style of a film that could only have been made in France, even if it wasn't, which suggested that they could have been 'writers' after all. 

Nobody got far as a pop singer without being fantastically good-looking. Elvis Costello's achievement is all the more admirable for that but Agnetha got a head start.

The Eurovision Song Contest win wasn't, it turns out, any sort of surprise. They knew what they were doing. They were a supergroup already. It was unfair to ask the other countries to expect to have any chance.

In retrospect.

But, in retrospect, it had been becoming obvious for a long time that Abba weren't a four-piece group but that the other three were Agnetha's backing musicians.

It might not have got any better if they had admitted it was that and had written more songs for her and tried to keep it going.

Why would you if you simply don't feel like doing it any more.

 

No, this is perfect.