The millions of long-time readers of this blog know that my favorite rock/pop music group is ABBA. I have nearly all of their songs downloaded on my MP3 player. Their most popular song and their biggest hit is "Dancing Queen". I was never particularly fond of this song. There are many other ABBA songs that I would prefer to listen to.
However, millions of long-time readers of this blog know that I also have some music keyboard skills. Well, I have taken up the task of learning how to play several ABBA songs on the piano. Much to my surprise, "Dancing Queen" is one of my favorite ABBA songs to play. Yes, I know this sounds strange - I don't really like to listen to "Dancing Queen", but I like to play it on the piano (much to my wife's chagrin). I have come to the point where I play along with the song while listening to it on my MP3 player. Thanks to some of the skills I learned from musical mentors (see the post from May 4th), I can play the melody with some of the harmony that Benny Andersson (one of the Bs from ABBA) played on the original "Dancing Queen" recording. When I do this, I have a completely different perspective of "Dancing Queen" than I do when just listening to it. I am amazed at the energy of the original music and the vocal performances of Agnetha and Anni-frid (the two As of ABBA, Bjorn is the other B). It is almost as if the musical notes are secondary to everything else going on in the song. The instrumental and vocal performances and their relationship to each other are extraordinary. I think that it what likely made "Dancing Queen" a timelessly popular song.
No comments:
Post a Comment