ABBA
's self-titled third album was the one that really broke the group on a worldwide basis. The Eurovision Song Contest winner
"Waterloo"
had been a major international hit and
"Honey, Honey"
a more modest one, but
was still an exotic novelty to most of those outside Scandinavia until the release of
in the spring of 1975.
"I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do,"
a schmaltzy tribute to the sound of '50s orchestra leader
Billy Vaughn
, seemed an unlikely first single, and indeed it barely scraped into the Top 40 in the U.K. But in Australia, it topped the charts, causing the Australian record company to pull its own second single,
"Mamma Mia,"
off the album. This far more appealing
pop/rock
number followed its predecessor into the pole position Down Under and also topped the charts throughout Europe.
"Bang-A-Boomerang,"
another big production, was less memorable and had less of an impact, but
"S.O.S."
brought
back to big success in the U.S. and the U.K., pulling along the first two singles. Beyond these tracks, the LP-only songs showed off the group's eclecticism, from the crunchy
hard rock
guitar riff that propelled
"Hey, Hey Helen"
to the ambitious instrumental
"Intermezzo No. 1,"
which showed off
Benny Andersson
and
Bjoern Ulvaeus
' classical leanings and foreshadowed their bigger composing projects of the 1980s.
was a surprisingly effective synthesis of
pop
rock
styles, surprising because the non-English-speaking world had not produced such effective Anglo-American-style contemporary music before, at least for more than a song or two. (The 2001 reissue of
, first released internationally and finally in the U.S., contains
"Crazy World,"
a song from the sessions for the album later released as a B-side, and a medley of
folk
songs first heard on a charity album.) ~ William Ruhlmann