so a while back I started doing this kind of weird and arbitrary thing - I made a list of all the books that were released as part of that 33 1/3 series and decided I'd listen/re-listen to all of those albums. Not something I'm like binge-listening or whatever, but just if I'm like "hey I don't know what I feel like listening to" I have this list as a prompt for something random.
When I was much younger - like say jr high - I found all my parents' vinyl in the attic and decided to try to broaden my horizons a bit. They had The Wall by Pink Floyd and I don't think I made it through a single side before deciding this wasn't my thing. But a few years later a buddy of mine turned me on to Piper At The Gates of Dawn - or more specifically "Interstellar Overdrive." That song has remained one of my fav PF songs forever, and over the two decades since I've also become a much bigger fan of the band as a whole. (I went thru a pretty heavy phase in like 2008 or so actually). I digress tho. Piper is a super weird album, but it's awesome. One minute it's psychadelic, the next it's folky and the lyrics are almost always fucked. "Interstellar Overdrive" is still the HIGHEST of the high points for me here. But Piper is one of those albums I put on and then I'm like "oh man I just wanna listen to more Pink Floyd now."
It's really weird to me that someone would write a book about a Greatest Hits album. I mean if you're writing about an ALBUM then you'd think you'd be writing about something conceived in the album format, no? I'm certainly not an Abba fan. And I refuse to capitalize all the letters in their name as I'm not a fan of stylized band names. And we don't pronounce it Aye Be Be Aye. Anyway, I admit that some of these tunes are totally feel-good. Stuff like "Dancing Queen" and "Fernando" and all that. It's like the Bee Gees disco stuff where I'm like "well, I don't really like disco. But this is definitely tuneful." I totally forgot that Abba even did that "Take A Chance On Me" song, so that kind of grabbed me. "Knowing Me, Knowing You" is totally my favorite here. And my ears perked about a bit when I recognized that bit in "Gimme Gimme Gimme" that Madonna sampled a few years back. BUT... at 19 tracks - most of which focuses on their disco-leaning years, this is just too much Abba for me and mostly not my thing.