ABBA

The song that introduced ABBA to the world by winning Eurovision. Its wit in likening surrender to love to Napoleon's defeat dovetailed with the staging.

• The piano lays down a bouncy, repeating left-hand rhythm that comes from the blues (boogie-woogie), and a saxophone barges in roughly, bringing the giddy energy of British glam rock.
• Agnetha and Frida sing most passages together on the same melody (unison), so it rings out broader and brighter than any single voice.
• Tretow layered the vocals and instruments again and again, so the sound comes across as thick as a wall — the prototype of the early ABBA sound.
• On the 1974 Brighton stage, the conductor dressed as Napoleon and Björn's star-shaped guitar became talking points. It was a performance meant to be seen as much as heard.

A song Australian TV recognized first, it lifted ABBA, stalled after Eurovision, back onto the world stage. It later lent its name to the musical.

• It opens with a marimba (a percussion instrument whose wooden bars are struck with mallets) figure ticking like the second hand of a clock. That brief sound becomes the song's first impression.
• In the verses, where a wavering heart pours itself out, the feeling is held in check; then in the chorus the two women's voices split into harmony and the song suddenly opens wide.
• Choppy, clipped acoustic guitar and solid drums hold an unhurried mid-tempo groove to the very end.
• Hallström's music video is remembered for framing the two women's faces overlapping in a single shot, and its repeated airing on Australia's “Countdown” set off a local craze.

Also performed at the gala on the eve of the king's wedding, this is ABBA's signature song and the group's only American number one. Its gaze on a seventeen-year-old's night is giddy yet somehow wistful.

• The piano throws open the door with a hand sweeping down the keys (glissando), and the structure grabs the ear by launching straight into a chorus-like climax without waiting for the verse.
• The drums, inspired by George McCrae's “Rock Your Baby,” lay down a relaxed rhythm that sways wider and looser than fast disco.
• Agnetha and Frida double the same melody in a high register, and strings and backing vocals stack up layer upon layer above them, forming a shimmering curtain of sound.
• Even as it sings of joy, a wistfulness lingers throughout the harmonies, so it sounds like the song of someone in the middle of a celebration who knows the moment will pass.

The song was first unveiled in 1979 at a UNICEF benefit concert in the United Nations General Assembly hall, where ABBA shared the stage with the Bee Gees and Donna Summer. Its royalties were donated to UNICEF.

• Over a quiet piano, Agnetha begins the song in a gentle, confiding voice, as if consoling a heartbroken friend.
• After the chorus, a guitar-and-piano interlude brings in a rhythm that sways like a South American folk dance, lending the song an exotic color.
• As the song unfolds, backing vocals and strings stack up layer by layer until the final chorus swells like a choir.
• A Spanish-language version was recorded separately and became a great favorite across Latin America.

A breakup song written by Björn and sung by Agnetha. The fact that their own separation lay beneath its emotion made it ABBA's most profound ballad.

• Benny's piano lays the song's foundation from start to finish, spreading each chord out one note at a time (arpeggio).
• With the line between verse and chorus blurred, and the same melodic block repeating and climbing little by little, the emotion never bursts all at once but rises slowly to the brim.
• Agnetha begins low and composed, then puts more weight into her voice as the song goes on, holding firm at the top as though on the verge of collapse.
• Where the backing vocals catch the ends of Agnetha's lines like an echo, the song sounds like a conversation, a soliloquy answered.

One of the last songs the four recorded together. A song that calmly retraces an ordinary day seems to echo the group's own quiet exit.

• In a narrative delivery that strings together the small routines of a day, low and almost spoken, Agnetha sustains the tension for nearly six minutes without a single dramatic high note.
• A machine-steady, repeating rhythm and Benny's synthesizers create the cold, crisp texture of early-1980s electronic sound.
• Behind the chorus, Frida's long, wordless notes in a high register drift like a ghost, casting an uneasy shadow over the song.
• Ending without ever saying what finally happened, the song lingers like a short story that leaves its conclusion blank.

A song from the 1979 disco era, it reached a new generation when Madonna used its synthesizer riff in “Hung Up” in 2005.

• A dark, cutting synthesizer riff drives the song from start to finish — the very sound Madonna carried off into “Hung Up.”
• Over a disco kick drum that stomps all four beats with equal force (four-on-the-floor), the two female voices overlap tautly in their upper range.
• A plea of midnight loneliness runs against the dancing rhythm, so the song sounds exhilarating and forlorn at once.

A track from “Voyage,” their first album in 40 years. The story of someone knocking at the door again after a long time away echoes ABBA's own return.

• The song's twist comes when it opens like a slow ballad of piano and voice and then, at a stroke, switches to a 1970s-style disco beat.
• In her seventies, Agnetha's voice has grown lower and rounder, yet she takes the lead and carries the song into the high, layered choruses that defined ABBA at its peak.
• Benny's piano and string arrangements call classic ABBA songs to mind as though quoting them, sounding like a bridge spanning half a century.