ABBA - I Still Have Faith In You/ Don't Shut Me Down

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I know we’d all like the singles chart to mean something these days (like what it used to) but we all know it doesn’t as it’s mainly based on songs played on repeat in hair salons by stylists whose brains have been torn out by extensions so we were never going to get a 1-2 but still HURRAH for the truly spectacular DSMD entering at 9 and getting the upper hand! :disco:
 
I'm just having a moan about the charts elsewhere but "Abba's new single went into the top 10" is a sentence I didn't expect to hear again in my lifetime.

(NB - my moan is the gulf between the album sales chart and the album chart and is thus, still vaguely Abba related)
 
Fewer singles were apparently released in Sweden.

That being said, Waterloo, Fernando, The Name Of The Game, Chiquitita, and Winner Takes It All were all #2s. (Day Before You Came the only other top 5 single).
 
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It's a combination of fewer singles being released there, and Sweden being full of REAL MUSIC BORES in the 70s, isn't it?
 
I wasn’t around to take responsibility for their number ones here but they actually were a bit disliked/controversial here at first, in some circles. Their music was considered commenrsial and this being the 70’s in an already leftist Sweden, some people saw them as a symbol for capitalism.
 
I wasn’t around to take responsibility for their number ones here but they actually were a bit disliked/controversial here at first, in some circles. Their music was considered commenrsial and this being the 70’s in an already leftist Sweden, some people saw them as a symbol for capitalism.
Yes, that's what I've read, I think. And in fairness, pretty much how they operated under Stig Anderson, who very much ran them as a business, forging different deals all over the world.
 
People in general love them and the news of their comeback have been talked about everywhere here, but it still feels like they’re a bigger deal in UK than they are here.
 
I'm fascinated by the songs that kept their #2s off #1.

The Name of the Game was beaten by noted prog rock epic YES SIR I CAN BOOGIE

Chiquitita by Hallelujah by Milk & Honey, which frankly FAIR ENOUGH :disco:

Fernando was pipped to the top by THIS CATCHY DITTY




And in a bizarre act of extremely one-sided cultural exchange, while The Winner Takes It All was #1 in the UK, it was blocked in Sweden by THIS HORROR

 
I LOVE that One More Reggae song, no idea who sings it or when it’s from but it was often played in the radio here in the 90’s.
 
Perhaps surprisingly, the new songs seem to have made less of an impact in Australia

#27 for Don't Shut Me Down, #39 for I Still Have Faith In You
 
OT: The official Swedish chart website is so much better than ours. I could spend hours looking through these bizarre charts.

Oh for the days when Nanne and Linda would storm into the top 5 one week due to a single well-attended CD signing down in Åhlens only to crash down to #52 the next. :(
 
Oh for the days when Nanne and Linda would storm into the top 5 one week due to a single well-attended CD signing down in Åhlens only to crash down to #52 the next. :(
I’m in 2004: Gunter and the Sunshine Girls have just knocked off Det gör ont, with a song called Teeny Weeny String Bikini. And now Dragostea Din Tei is at the top, but it’s a cover version.

EDIT: And now Sam Fox has topped the charts (!) - still 2004.
 
Perhaps surprisingly, the new songs seem to have made less of an impact in Australia

#27 for Don't Shut Me Down, #39 for I Still Have Faith In You

It’s because we don’t have the same rule about artists only being able to have 3 songs in the chart - there are 12 Drake songs above Don’t Shut Me Down and 17 ahead of I Still Have Faith In You
 
I'm fascinated by the songs that kept their #2s off #1.

The Name of the Game was beaten by noted prog rock epic YES SIR I CAN BOOGIE

Chiquitita by Hallelujah by Milk & Honey, which frankly FAIR ENOUGH :disco:

Fernando was pipped to the top by THIS CATCHY DITTY




And in a bizarre act of extremely one-sided cultural exchange, while The Winner Takes It All was #1 in the UK, it was blocked in Sweden by THIS HORROR


Weren't Baccara HUGE in the Nordics generally? I'm sure I remember reading not long ago that their first album is still one of the biggest of all time in Finland.
 
Here we are, from Wikipedia

Later that year, a self-titled album, written and produced by Soja and Dostal, was released. The album Baccara was the first platinum selling album—actually double platinum in 1978—by a foreign group in Finland. In 2013, the album still remains the sixth biggest selling album of all time in Finland.[8]

Mr L bought an old 80s chart book in a charity shop a month or two ago which listed the album as one of the biggest of the 70s in Finland, and I remember checking to see if it was still the case.
 
I can't quite get my head around Abba having a top ten single in 2021. Even with a physical release I never imagined it possible.
 
Don’t Shut Me Down has become ABBA’s fourth ever Swedish number one, after Ring Ring, Dancing Queen and Summer Night City.

(I Still Have Faith In You is #2).
Summer Night City is one of their best though :disco:
 
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Don’t B&B famously hate Summer Night City? As a child it always struck me as being a bit SORDID and certainly NOT what I was expecting from such a previously wholesome foursome
 
All that talk about sweaty penetration behind privets and buggery in bushes was QUITE THE SHOCKER
 
Don’t B&B famously hate Summer Night City? As a child it always struck me as being a bit SORDID and certainly NOT what I was expecting from such a previously wholesome foursome
I think they have certainly said they aren't happy with the finished product and that it shouldn't have been a single.

The biggest ignominy was sticking that medley on the b-side, though...
 
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Summer Night City is a bit uncharacteristically DENSE (sonically speaking) for them but does work better with that extended intro
 
Didn’t they call out Summer Night City in that interview? Actually I can’t remember what they said, I thought they said it should’ve been bigger?

NO WAIT was it Under Attack?
 

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