The Girl With The Golden Hair

July 14, 2012 7:45 AM

Before Kristina från Duvemåla, before Chess, certainly long before Mamma Mia, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA were experimenting with storytelling through music. As part of their 1977 world tour, ABBA closed out their shows with the mini-musical The Girl With The Golden Hair [~25m, illustrative video (not a live filming), 1977 bootleg-quality audio] (full lyrics).

The experiment and its quasi-autobiographical nature is explored in more detail in a 2006 documentary [~40m, in 3 parts: 1 2 3].

(The unreleased final song Get On The Carousel seems to have had some of its musical ideas reworked into Hole In Your Soul from The Album.)

posted by hippybear (7 comments total)

Had I seen this sometime earlier, I would never have allowed my family to drag me--for a "treat"--to see Mamma Mia
posted by Postroad at 8:35 AM on July 14, 2012

Hole in your soul... I didn't know ABBA did the singing for the Chipmunks.
posted by Mojojojo at 10:18 AM on July 14, 2012

Thank you for this music.
posted by Robert Angelo at 3:21 PM on July 14, 2012

Kristina från Duvemåla is 3+ hours of the best music no one here will ever listen to.
posted by jabah at 4:45 PM on July 14, 2012

I have it, it's wonderful. I don't understand a word, but the music is great.
posted by hippybear at 8:01 PM on July 14, 2012

There's an English translation as well.
posted by Gordafarin at 1:30 AM on July 16, 2012

GodDAMN I love me some ABBA.
posted by Edison Carter at 7:14 AM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]