How Can She Resist It?

My mother has exhibited the weirdest behavior lately. She can't stop watching the movie version of the Abba Broadway musical "Mamma Mia!" whenever it comes on cable television, and it's been on cable TV a lot. She loves the storyline, but she also likes the songs and the music.

But get this - she doesn't remember Abba from the seventies!

My mother was in her mid-thirties when ABBA were together, and they were always on the Top Forty AM radio station we used to listen to then, since they had so many hits. And Mom doesn't remember the Swedish quartet? Hmmm, maybe the songs simply sank in to her psyche through osmosis.

Abba have long been criticized for their lightweight, airy, plastic pop songs, but their records have turned out to be durable plastic. How else can you explain the fact that "Mamma Mia!" will have been on Broadway for eight years this October, and shows no signs of slowing down despite the movie version being so obviously available on demand. Abba have remained popular since their breakup in 1982 and have resisted efforts to regroup far more successfully than the Beatles, who of course reunited as a threesome and concocted new Beatles songs with unfinished John Lennon recordings for the Anthology project. Abba had even been rumored to be the substitutes for the fifty dates Michael Jackson was to perform in London.

Abba had a unique start when they, as Sweden's choice to contribute an entry in the 1974 Eurovision song contest, chose "Waterloo," a song referring to Napoleon's last defeat. They won the Eurovision song contest, and it was their first international hit. Now that's irony for you.