At Seventeen

At Seventeen
1. ABBA was a 1970’s pop group of two men and two women from Sweden. The group’s name is an acronym of the four’s initials. The two men played the guitar and the keyboards and the two women sang. Two marriages resulted from the group’s association. Although both ended in divorce, they continued their gigs as a group.
Even now ABBA’s music is played as the centerpiece of the long-running musical “Mamma Mia” in London and New York. ABBA not only had a catalog of many great hit songs, but also excellent business sense. During the height of their popularity, ABBA had more sales than Volvo, the world-renowned Swedish carmaker (excluding military industries like tank manufacturers). Volvo was later acquired by America’s GM, and in 2010 by Geely Holding Group in China.

2. Having become a generational icon, ABBA’s greatest hit song was ‘Dancing Queen,’ which goes like this:
　　″　Friday night and the lights are low,
Looking out for the place to go″
　　″　You are the Dancing Queen　　
Young and sweet, only seventeen　
Dancing Queen
Feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive
Having the time of your life″
　

　　　It’s clearly a song of living your youth and prime of life.

３、Just about the same time, Janis Ian sang the ballad ‘At Seventeen’ accompanied on the folk guitar. It was one of the songs in her Grammy-winning masterpiece album “Between the Lines.” ‘At Seventeen’ has deep lyrics and is full of metaphors and slang expressions that can be interpreted in many ways. Some excerpts are:
″I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens″
″The Valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful″


It’s clearly a song about the darker side of youth. A great song, yes, but as far as the lyrics go, it seems a bit hopeless and “beyond all help.”
The second half of the lyrics has the line: “It was long ago and far away.” It means
“Only time will tell what really matters in life”
which sounds like it holds out some hope.
However, one might say that, in reality, life at seventeen is not as glamorous as ‘Dancing Queen’, but more like “bored youth failing to find hope” as Janis Ian sang.

４、I listened to these songs when I was around 17 and was quite mystified by the huge gap between the lyrics.
There is another similar song, ‘Melody Fair’, by the Bee Gees. It was the title song of the film of the same name and the lyrics talked to a girl called Melody like this:
“Melody knows that life is hard and full of miseries
She is crying,watching the rain falling down on the window
Won’t you comb of your hair? You are not alone.
There are bad times and good times in life”

At the time, the Bee Gees sang mostly ballads and their fading popularity made them consider breaking up. They were becoming passé. During this slump, the group went through a period of trial and error with their producer’s advice. Then the box office hit film “Saturday Night Fever” brought them a full comeback, triggering a disco boom around the world. It’s just like the story in the ‘Melody Fair’ lyrics. The single ‘Staying Alive’ from the album “Saturday Night Fever” hooked me totally when I was 17.