A late late birthday present arrived yesterday; a deluxe version of Abba's The Album. I don't remember ever asking for it, but it does contain my favorite Abba song ever, “Eagle”…
It appears I'm not alone in thinking this is their best song ever, though I don't think I could write quite so much on it as the chap below…
” But forget about “Thank You For The
Music”, concentrate on “Eagle” – the one song in the ABBA catalog
that I simply worship. Briefly speaking, never have I heard a song
about birds and flying whose arrangement would so perfectly exact type of echo,
invented that exact main synthesizer riff that underpins the song,
made their guitarist play the exact brilliantly economic solo that's
needed for this song, and made the girls sound exactly appropriate
and unobtrusive at the same time. But that's not all: special attention
must be paid to all the multiple sonic overlays in the song, some of them
almost Eno-ish: little 'bubbly' outburst of synthesizer and guitar from
time to time, musical 'raindrops' pouring from the sky or birdies whistling
through the clouds. And to top it all, towards the end of the song all
the singing just dies away and we are given a little possibility to simply
concentrate on the atmosphere, as the main synth riff gets repeated several
times with all the sound effects floating by… This is classic, and a
song that not only fully deserves its near-six minutes running time, but
is actually too short for me.
http://starling.rinet.ru/music/abba.htm
Music”, concentrate on “Eagle” – the one song in the ABBA catalog
that I simply worship. Briefly speaking, never have I heard a song
about birds and flying whose arrangement would so perfectly exact type of echo,
invented that exact main synthesizer riff that underpins the song,
made their guitarist play the exact brilliantly economic solo that's
needed for this song, and made the girls sound exactly appropriate
and unobtrusive at the same time. But that's not all: special attention
must be paid to all the multiple sonic overlays in the song, some of them
almost Eno-ish: little 'bubbly' outburst of synthesizer and guitar from
time to time, musical 'raindrops' pouring from the sky or birdies whistling
through the clouds. And to top it all, towards the end of the song all
the singing just dies away and we are given a little possibility to simply
concentrate on the atmosphere, as the main synth riff gets repeated several
times with all the sound effects floating by… This is classic, and a
song that not only fully deserves its near-six minutes running time, but
is actually too short for me.
http://starling.rinet.ru/music/abba.htm