ABBA single couplings: Super Trouper/The Piper
April 26, 2010Hello everyone!
Starting this month, I’ll be featuring a series of excerpts from my book … kicking off with a look at my favourite ABBA singles.
2010 marks the 30th anniversary of the SUPER TROUPER album’s release, so here’s an overview of ABBA’s ninth and final UK number one single, Super Trouper c/w The Piper.
SUPER TROUPER is a more vocally selective album than VOULEZ-VOUS, the self-confident and assertive approach of its predecessor toned down, the lead vocals instead displaying a pronounced contrast in emotional intensity between verse and chorus. The change of personality is most evident on the non-unison tracks, which by now dominated the ABBA musical landscape. The unison lead vocal output had been reduced to only two (On And On And On and The Piper), a subtle hint of the increasingly introspective direction in which Benny and Björn were taking the group sound.
Frida’s lead vocals in the verses of Super Trouper and Andante Andante are soft and reflective, with a distinct increase in power and edge in each chorus. The reverse applies to Me And I, in which the pert flippancy of the verses is replaced by a tender deference in the chorus. Super Trouper was the last-minute emergency number written for the album – written and recorded all within a time frame of three days – yet the intricacy of its production glows like the spotlight to which it pays tribute.
The title track is a song rich in textural contrasts. While As Good As New kicked off the previous album with a surprise string chamber orchestra, Super Trouper marked another ABBA first with its unique a capella vocal introduction. However, these angelic layers did not give way to the disco-inspired undertones that permeated VOULEZ-VOUS. Instead, they segue into a mid-tempo and rather wistful piano and glockenspiel-led refrain, which incidentally comprises the same chords – albeit in different keys – as both the refrain and the second of The Winner Takes It All’s two phrases. (These two songs and their links are discussed in detail in Chapter 27, “The roads to number one”.)
Super Trouper is another illuminating example of ABBA’s ability to paint over an inherently melancholy melodic undercoat with vibrant colours. Benny and Björn were careful not to abuse the immense power of minor chords when it came to melodic construction. The minor moments in the verses of Super Trouper gently complement the harmonic massage of Frida’s milk-and-honey lead vocal, the poignancy of which reaches its height in the bridge linking the second and final choruses. Agnetha follows the melancholy path with a wistfully understated descant harmony vocal in falsetto, which features a subtle variation in harmony in her repeat statement of each chorus.
Super Trouper was the last song to be written before the group’s inner harmony was put to the test a second time. Not only would the masterful balance it struck between joviality and reflection be sorely questioned in the aftermath of John Lennon’s assassination in December, a bombshell from ABBA’s remaining married couple in February was a blow upon a bruise that would have a profound impact on the group’s future musical direction.
The sombre refrain to The Piper marks a return to the atmospheric minor verse/major chorus of THE ALBUM’s Eagle. With the benefit of hindsight, The Piper could be seen to be one of a trilogy of songs that share this common structural – and lyrical – thread, which culminates in the foreboding Soldiers from THE VISITORS. All are musically intriguing, atypically abstract and reflect Björn’s growing desire to share his literary interpretations through ABBA’s music.
These are boldly exposed in The Piper, the lyric of which was inspired by the chilling Stephen King novel, The Stand. In a macabre reworking of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, it tells the story of a man with no face who invades and corrupts people in their dreams, recruiting them for his own sinister purposes. A dark premise for an ABBA song, but the synergy between such text and the music’s fateful shifts in tonality is flawless.
Benny’s GX-1 sets the mood in The Piper’s verses, riding Rutger Gunnarsson’s driving bass with yet another intoxicating sound variation that falls somewhere between a plucked electric guitar and a felt stick tapping a snare drum. The usual potpourri of synth decorations prevails in this, the last ABBA track to feature a unison vocal from Agnetha and Frida. A hint of Swedish folk song can be detected in the chorus’ rousing call to arms, not to mention the ancestral cries of the Irish and the Celts.
The defining element of The Piper is its middle section, which firmly embodies the production’s medieval tone. Enter the roaming end-blown flute (also known as the recorder, the descant – the highest in range – of which is played here), under whose hypnotic spell the voices of Agnetha and Frida fall. With all the reverence of a church offertory chant, the girls deliver the haunting Latin text “sub luna saltamus” (dance beneath the moon), enlivening the protagonists of age-old superstition: witchcraft, ancient stone circles and sacrificial ceremonies, to name but three. At the touch of a keyboard, Benny rolls his own medieval ensemble of sackbut, viol and lute all into one beneath them, and the seduction is complete.
The liberation brought by the song’s major-key chorus is of a far more sinister nature than it pretends. Having transfixed all in his midst, The Piper now sings through the souls of his chosen ones, and their fate is sealed. His doomed followers rejoice in one last exultation of loyalty at the song’s climax, as the forces of evil play their final hand.
Copyright Christopher Patrick 2004-2010
Next month: Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) c/w The King Has Lost His Crown
