“Dancing Queen” (ABBA)

Today’s classic dancing song of the day is a big one: “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. The group recorded it in August of 1975 and released it as a single internationally a year later, in August of 1976. The song hit #1 in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, Sweden, the UK, and West Germany. Here in the U.S., it hit #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cashbox Top 100 charts. It was a smash.

ABBA is a particular guilty pleasure of mine. In fact, back in the ’90s, for a short period of time, I had a website titled Guilty Pleasures and ABBA was my very first post. The group—Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad—were an international phenomenon in the ’70s and early ’80s, churning out hit after frothy hit and dominating the charts across the world.

Like most of the group’s hits, “Dancing Queen” was written by Benny and Björn, with an assist by Stig Anderson. It’s a straight-up Europop disco tune, tailor made for dancing. The boys found inspiration in George McCrae’s “Rock Your Baby” and in Phil Spector’s famed Wall of Sound productions. It was a perfect song for those polyester, bell bottomed, leisure suited times.

“Dancing Queen” was featured in the musical and resulting movie Mamma Mia! My granddaughter Hayley’s high school did the play last fall and, boy, was it fun. The kids really got a kick out of the retro costumes and ended up as latter-day ABBA fans. It’s not surprising why; Benny and Björn knew how to write a hit and Agnetha and Frida knew out to deliver it. ABBA really shouldn’t be a guilty pleasure; their music was pop music at its best.

All good things must come to an end, of course, and ABBA broke up in 1982. They’d been together in one form or another since 1966, when Benny and Björn first met and started writing together. Over the years ABBA notched up 14 top forty singles in the U.S. alone, including “Waterloo,” “Honey, Honey,” “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do,” “SOS,” “Mamma Mia,” “Fernando,” “Dancing Queen,” “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” “The Name of the Game,” “Take a Chance on Me,” “Chiquitita,” “Does Your Mother Know,” “The Winner Takes It All,” and “When All Is Said and Done.” Of these, only “Dancing Queen” made it to #1 in the U.S. (The group was considerably more popular in other countries; they had nine #1 hits in the UK, for example.)

So get out your sequined jumpsuits and turn up the volume. You know you want to dance to this one!