Friday 5: 5 ABBA Songs That Belong in a New Musical

5 ABBA Songs The Belong in a New Musical

With Mamma Mia! back on Broadway, and the high profile revival of Chess coming in next month, its seems that ABBA is all the rage on the Rialto once again. (Really, were they ever out of style?) In recent years, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again was a box office success, and the Swedish super group came out with its newest (and Grammy-nominated) album in decades, Voyage, and went from there to create a new phenomenon, the digital-virtual reality concert/show, called, fittingly, ABBA Voyage. On the Chess front, the show has never really been too far from the public conscience, including the highly successful concert version starring Josh Groban, Adam Pascal, Kerry Ellis and Idina Menzel, and the Kennedy Center staged concert with a revised book, and starring Raul Esparza, Ramin Karimloo, Karen Olivo and Ruthie Ann Miles. It is that version which has progressed to the new Broadway revival starring Aaron Tveit, Nicholas Christopher, Lea Michele and Hannah Cruz.

So, how about a new ABBA scored musical featuring songs that haven't hit the Broadway stage yet? Here are 5 songs from their most recent albums that I think were made for theatricality. And this time, maybe something more dramatic...serious...

 

"The Day Before You Came" from The Visitors (Deluxe Edition)

Scholarly articles have been written about this song (I'm not joking). It deals with serious issues - relationships, feminism - and a purposely vague narrative that could be interpreted in a number of ways (again, I refer you to the articles written about the song). There's plot, defined characters, and devilishly mundane details. Is the narrator talking about life before meeting someone who changed her forever? Or is she being interrogated and giving a minute by minute accounting of her time before the police arrived? Or is it something else entirely? And the song is catchy as hell.

Though it has not been made a part of any ABBA theater work to date, it was included as a bonus track on the Here We Go Again soundtrack, interpreted by no less than Meryl Streep! Here is a lyric video for you to catch every word.

"Don't Shut Me Down" from Voyage

There's setting, plot, flashback, confrontation and transformation. Here we have a narrator at first contemplating what seeing a former lover again could be like, and then how it plays out.

Some of the lyric choices are interesting...Bjorn himself quipped during an album launch interview that the song is told by a robot - an avatar - and sounded funny. Of course, we now live in a post Maybe Happy Ending world. Is it really all that far-fetched?

"Keep an Eye on Dan" from Voyage

Here's another catchy song that lures you in with dramatic possibilities. A mother is leaving her son for a visit with his dad. She is fraught with anxiety and worries what will happen. The titular refrain begs the question: Is her son, Dan, in need of close supervision, and she's imploring her ex to be cautious and observant. And she gives the child reassurances and instructions, too. OR... Is she telling her son to watch out for what his dad, also Dan, might do? Maybe it is both? Neither? Drama abounds with this song.

Be sure to listen to the last notes as the song fades out...

"Two For the Price of One" from The Visitors

Here's a fun, slightly naughty story-song with named characters and a story that builds to a great plot twist. Even a serious musical needs to have its light moments. (No spoilers. Listen for yourself!)

"The Visitors" from The Visitors

Every show needs an enigma song. What is this about? Alien visitors? Ghosts? The musings of a mental patient? A paranoid recluse? The line between hysteria and reality are blurry here. You decide.

BONUS: "Soldiers" from The Visitors

Don't let the catchy, upbeat tune fool you. This is a song that deals with militarism, the human lust for war and our helplessness against it, and the power of propaganda. But there is a warning here, and with it a glimmer of hope. Written in the 80s during the Cold War (like Chess), this song has 2025 all over it.