It will break my heart, but I might have to delete ABBA from my playlist *UPDATED*
UPDATE: The Trump campaign says it properly licensed the songs. Bye-bye, ABBA.
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I was 13 when ABBA won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, and even the American airwaves were suddenly filled with “Waterloo” and all the other frothy, fun, beautifully harmonized ABBA music. I’ve been a fan ever since. However, I may have to delete ABBA from my playlist if the group’s demand that Trump stop using its music is rooted in politics and not in the Trump campaign wrongly forgetting to pay for the rights to use the music.
ABBA is an institution today, so my children can’t even imagine a time when it was uncool to like ABBA. However, when I was in middle and high school during the 1970s, even though ABBA had a string of huge hit songs, they were considered decidedly un-hip amongst my fellow students. Those of us who liked them, along with other pop groups such as the Bay City Rollers and The Carpenters (whom I also liked ‘cause I like pop music), faced withering ridicule for our simplistic musical tastes.
Image: ABBA in 1974 at Eurovision (cropped). YouTube screen grab.
However, as music got more canned and generic moving into the 1980s and then added less melody starting in the 1990s thanks to rap and hip-hop, people began to appreciate the bounce, rich harmonies, and lovely melodies from these 1970s stars. Then, movies such as Muriel’s Wedding and Mama Mia brought ABBA’s songs to a whole new generation.
And through it all, there I was...a fan. Nor was I the only fan.
I was recently on a cruise with my family, and my daughter and I attended the ABBA trivia night. Since the whole family loves trivia, I can say that it was the best attended on the cruise.
It was also the trivia night that spun out of control. The deal was that the host played a snippet of the song and then participants wrote down the song’s name. However, once the songs started, the crowd kept singing along with them, including singing the names. It was enjoyable chaos.
However, I’m sorry to report that it’s possible that my love affair with ABBA ended today:
The musical group ABBA has demanded that former President Donald Trump stop using their music after he played several of their songs during a campaign rally.
On Tuesday, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported that the GOP nominee played several of ABBA’s songs at his campaign rally in Minnesota, including “Money, Money, Money,” “The Winner Takes It All,” and “Dancing Queen.”
A video of the ABBA members was also shown during the campaign on a big screen alongside messages urging supporters to donate.
ABBA’s record company, Universal Music, claimed that they were not asked for permission to use the music or videos and that footage from the event must be “immediately taken down and removed.”
We may still learn that the problem is one of copyrights and royalties, not partisan issues—that is, that the Trump campaign might have used the music without paying royalties. In that case, ABBA is correct in defending its rights in music, and the Trump campaign is wrong. In that case, I don’t have to delete my beloved ABBA music from my Spotify playlist.
However, if it turns out that ABBA is behaving as other rock bands have by claiming that they get the final say as to their music’s use, regardless of whether the people using it have paid for licensing rights, then I’m done with them. Every time I listen to a song on Spotify, the group’s members get money from me, and I can’t tolerate that from some Swedes who have decided to interfere in American politics.
I’ll let you know if further information clarifies what’s going on it—i.e., whether ABBA got political, or the Trump campaign used the group’s music without paying for it. For now, I’m keeping the songs in my playlist because, if this is the fault of the Trump campaign, it’ll be a pain to reassemble the list. But if the Trump campaign played by the rules, ABBA is gone.