Cher’s Glorious Cyborgification of ABBA
When one legend of pop camp covers another, the results are preposterous—and weirdly moving.
As is the case for all great acts that rewrite the definition of “pop music,” ABBA hacked the machinery of human emotion. They took the eternal tick-tock of disco and latched it to the glorious confinement of the 3-minute verse-chorus workout. They found a universal mean between four individualized singers. And they deduced the equation that specifies a certain amount of emotional down needs to enable the ecstatic up: Before smiling and having fun, you have to remember how sick and tired you felt last night in.
