Memoires of Another Kind

Papa bought our first cassette tape recorder with the Swedish pop group ABBA’s Arrival album. It contained the biggest hit ever recorded by ABBA, Dancing Queen, and as such I consider it to be my signature song. They’d said that it reached the No. 1 position on the pop music charts in 13 countries. I love its opening keyboard and hummed vocals, of Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, are said to be one of the most identifiable sections in pop music. It was written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson for the group's album Arrival. It has a relatively straight-forward lyric/ storyline; it’s about a seventeen-year-old girl having a good time on Friday night. Not fazed by the social pressures in her daily life as a teenager, all she wants to do is go out and look for a “king” to dance with.

Interestingly, I learned that Dancing Queen was released as a single in 1976 with That’s Me as the B-side. I was ten-year-old then, we’re back in Pittsburg City of the South, and Papa was working this time at the flour mill. Every friday after class, we would visit the old apartment near the steel plant to check the police dog that we left behind. I looked forward to these visits not for our dog but for Rookie, he has grown since we left.