One more time trying to put my appreciation of K3 into perspective. I once posted the Rubettes’ song “Sugar Baby Love,” but it was lost eighteen months ago when a bug-ridden WordPress plug-in allowed my database to be destroyed, forcing me to restore from a backup. Here again is “Sugar Baby Love.”
http://youtu.be/3X7PvU6qYEA
No, I never cared in the least for The Bay City Rollers, but this I love. If I were going to write and produce a pop tune, you can bet it would sound like “Sugar Baby Love.” Next, ABBA ranks right up there with the best of the 70’s sicky-sweet stuff.
Listen to the 15+ seconds that start at :45 into the song. That’s it! For me that’s the song. Perfection! The same bit is repeated at 1:45. (The song is over a little after 2:30, but they drag it out.) If you think my liking ABBA means I would be inclined to see “Mama Mia!” then you don’t get it. It’s the song itself. How it’s put together, and how it sounds, that I appreciate. Something that’s “based upon it” is of no interest to me at all. In the case of ABBA, the “how it sounds” aspect depended completely upon the girls, Anni-Frid and Agnetha.
And now K3, in a piece I can’t praise enough. “Hart Verloren” pushes all sorts of buttons in so many ways, even with the terrible quality of this video. And I’m speaking as a confirmed disco hater from the 70’s who favored The Ramones, Elvis Costello and The Clash.
http://youtu.be/sEackIhp-O4
The people who create this stuff really know what they’re doing. But the thing that I didn’t get when I first encountered K3, but I certainly do now, is that K3 is successful not because of the formula, but because of Karen, Kristel and Kathleen. Accept no substitutes, of which there are now two sets.
Finally, another reason why I push K3 so much is the fact they’re happening NOW. I caught them before they stopped having hits, broke up, or went into semi-retirement. Not everything I write should be about the pop culture I loved when I was 10-15 years old. There’s also the fact I can’t compete with the big sites that talk about the Beatles, Marvel Comics, etc., and here in America I have K3 practically all to myself as a topic.
Joachim –
I was going to use ABBA’s “SOS” because that’s how “Hart Verloren” begins, but I came across “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do” and went with that instead. If there’s one thing that’s common sonically in these songs, they all prominently feature bell sounds.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Waterloo. Finally facing my Waterloo!…”. As someone who grew up with ABBA I thought it was cool that a new generation of ABBA fans came along. It was also cool that 2 Australian comedy films, “Priscilla:Queen of the Desert” and “Muriel’s Wedding” featured ABBA’s music and included it in performance scenes in the films. Also is good that the 2 female singers have had solo success. At college i used to play the 1982 single “I Know There’s Something Going On” that Anni-Frid Lyngstad released under the name Frida. That song rocked and it had producer Phil Collins’ big drums on it. “I know there’s something going on…on…on…BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM…!”.
Wow, you can really hear a lot of the “K3” sound in “Sugar Baby Love.” Say, that man singer looks like Don Ho’s son …. Hit that high note, mister, shouldn’t be too hard in those tight, white pants!
Yes, the 70s was a “Decade of Shame” for music in a lot of ways. Yeah, you could dance to disco once you had a few whiskey sours in ya, but with songs like porn star Andrea True’s “More, More, More,” there wasn’t much good material to dance to! One big exception was the Bee Gees. Molly is hooked on them now, and they’ve been downloaded to her new iPod nano. She loves “Stayin’ Alive” and “You Should Be Dancing.” Of course, we all laughed at Maurice’s falsetto (maybe it killed him in the end), but it was the only real quality disco back then. “Saturday Night Fever” was really the beginning of the end of the true disco period. Ah, yes, and now poor John Travolta has lost a son. Tom sadly put his name on his back-pocket list of people who have lost a child too soon. But I digress.
I forgot about that particular ABBA song, and it’s one of my favorites! Besides the smooth sax, the girls’ voices are great. I have to admit, I liked “Dancing Queen” when it came out. (Molly downloaded that, too!) but was not always patient with some of their other work. I declined going to the movie because I heard Pierce Brosnan made a total fool out of himself. Meryl Streep actually CAN sing, but it still couldn’t save the movie.
But don’t worry, Dougie! Molly is slowly becoming a K3 fan! I think she’s up to about five tunes on her BELOVED new iPod!
Ah, ABBA. Another piece of music I like, although I am much younger. But that is probably because of my family and relatives who brought me to ABBA a few years ago. But right now I also like K3 better. And I think you are absolutely right about K3.
However, concerning this ABBA song, I would not consider it a favourite of mine, I like others better. These get better from top to bottom. 🙂