“Mamma mia, right here I’m going once more.”
Steven Wilson typically makes use of Mamma Mia as the right instance of why ABBA’s songwriting deserves much more respect than it generally will get, particularly from musicians who suppose pop is in some way “easy”.
On paper, it’s a three minute pop music. In actuality, it’s a masterclass in construction, restraint, and relentless melodic invention.
Steven’s level is disarmingly easy. Depend the hooks.
The music opens with a hook right away, not a heat up, not a scene setter, a hook. Then it strikes into one other distinct musical concept that would simply be the refrain of a lesser music. Then one other. Then one other. By the point you arrive on the precise “Mamma Mia” chorus, you will have already been handed 4 absolutely shaped hooks, every with its personal identification, contour, and emotional pull.
After which ABBA do one thing quietly good.
When “Mamma Mia” lastly arrives, the band drops parts out, creating area and distinction. The affect comes not from piling issues on, however from understanding precisely what to take away. That chorus lands more durable as a result of of every little thing that got here earlier than it.
And they’re nonetheless not finished.
After that, you get yet one more melodic concept, the “da da da da” line, which in some way features as a sixth hook in a music that hardly crosses the three minute mark.
This isn’t unintentional. It isn’t intuition alone. It’s craft on the highest degree.
ABBA understood one thing basic about pop songwriting. Consideration is treasured. When you have an important concept, use it. When you have a number of nice concepts, sequence them. Don’t save your finest second for later, as a result of later might by no means come.
What makes this much more exceptional is how easy it sounds. There is no such thing as a sense of pressure or over complexity. Nothing feels crowded or indulgent. Every part flows naturally into the subsequent, but each second is memorable.
Steven typically contrasts this with progressive music, his personal world, the place lengthy kinds and improvement are prized. ABBA, nonetheless, compress that sense of journey into minutes quite than actions. The ambition remains to be there, it’s merely disguised by pleasure, readability, and melody.
Not that ABBA wrote catchy songs. Many individuals can do that when.
The genius is that they wrote hook laden, structurally daring, emotionally direct music that feels inevitable, as if it might solely ever have existed precisely this fashion.
Three minutes. Six hooks. Zero wasted seconds.
That’s songwriting on the very highest degree.
