In addition to sporadic posts about all of the shenanigans and goings-on in my life, I wanted to add something to keep me regular. Pop cultural Metamucil if you will. To that end, I recently came across a list of 500 albums Elvis Costello considers to be essential. I've decided to attempt to have my own Julie and Julia moment. I'm going to listen to all of these albums and jot down my thoughts stream of consciousness style. Then I'll rank the album in the 500. The rankings will obviously have to evolve. So here we go! We begin with Abba Gold by Abba.
We've clicked play and I'm realizing I've never actually listened to an Abba album before in my life. I don't know if this counts, it's a greatest hits compilation after but here we go.
Dancing Queen, I know this song. I love this song because I've got blood pressure. I'm going to be doing this while I'm working, thoughts will be less sporadic going forward. I feel like Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg in the middle of the social network with less misogyny. Spell check had to teach me to spell that by the way.
I'm on track two (Knowing Me, Knowing You) and seriously, where have I been on Abba...how could you people let me down like this? I needed someone to tie me to a chair and play me some Abba years ago. Could it be like this for Steeley Dan? The Grateful Dead? SELF DISCOVERY!
Of course, I know this song (Take A Chance on Me), I heard it on the Muppet Show once. I wonder how much of my early musical knowledge came from The Muppet Show? I know it's where I first heard Benny and the Jets or For What It's Worth or anything by Harry Belafonte.
So this is Mama Mia...a song I've only heard in movie trailers. What am I, some sort of cave-dwelling martian!? This is such a good album and I've enjoyed every single song so far. It's a greatest-hits, so I guess that's to be expected.
Ok...so we're in the middle here, the last two songs (Lay All Your Love On Me and Super Trouper) kind of ran together so they are pretty unremarkable. Not bad mind you, just didn't snap me out of my occupationally-induced haze.
I feel like this record has taken a pretty hard turn. We're on I Have A Dream now and I'm certainly not toe-tapping. There's no law saying that I have to be, but this song just isn't doing it for me at the moment. Musically, it sounds like a generic country karaoke song that someone is jamming out on the sitar with, like those guys you see in the underground El stations in Chicago. Not feeling it...
I got kind of lost in The Winner Takes It All. I was just enjoying it and not paying any attention. However, now we're on Money Money Money and I'm...like....what are we doing here?
You're starting to lose me Abba...I like the general sound of Chiquitita, but it's just not hitting me. It is really fun to say though!
Fernando, no duh I loved Fernando. I'm a carbon-based lifeform.
Voulez-Vous is bringing me back in, I'm tapping my toes while I answer e-mails.
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) is a lot of fun. I can imagine I'll be singing this chorus for the rest of the day...I don't know if that angers me or not.
I'm instantly hating Does Your Mother Know, like I'm having an adverse reaction from note one...but now that we're singing and stuff, I'm a little more "on board", but not in love. As it comes to an end, this song has won me over. What a journey that was.
We've moved on to One of Us and man, I'm in love. Even with the weird synthesized...tuba, I think it is, that's a super catchy song.
And we're done. I didn't have too much to say about the last two songs (The Name of the Game and Thank You For The Music) and then there's Waterloo, which I already knew and loved.
So that's that, one album down. I think it's fun to post my stream of consciousness thoughts and leave it at that, so I only edited this for spelling and grammar.
We'll end by saying that, no duh, my favorite song was Dancing Queen. My least favorite song was probably Money, Money, Money.
EC's 500 Albums Power Ranking
1. Abba Gold - Abba
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