Can there be anything camper than Erasure covering ABBA? How about Erasure recording an entire E.P. of ABBA covers, and called it ‘ABBA-esque’?
ABBA-Esque (E.P.), by Erasure (their 1st and only #1)
5 weeks, from 7th June – 12th July 1992
ABBA scored nine #1s between 1974 and 1980, making them at this point in time the fifth most successful chart-topping act (behind Elvis, the Beatles, Cliff, and The Shadows). But luckily, three of the four tunes Erasure chose to cover didn’t make top spot originally. Starting with, perhaps, ABBA’s greatest non-number one single…
I’m not sure which was the ‘lead’ single from the E.P. – I get the feeling it was track three, but they made videos for all of them – so I’ll go through them in order. We kick off with ‘Lay All Your Love on Me’, which was only ever released by ABBA as a 12” single. It’s the most faithful cover of the four, with the mood and tempo kept, and just the instrumentation updated to a post-SAW, Hi-NRG style. I love that they don’t change the pronouns in the lyrics, as most acts do when covering a song originally sung by a different gender, and we’re treated to Andy Bell asking how a grown up woman can ever fall so easily…
Of the four, I don’t think I’d ever heard their take on ‘S.O.S.’ before. And, of the four, it’s my least favourite. ‘S.O.S.’ is an important song in the ABBA canon: the song that extended ABBA’s career beyond simply being Eurovision winners; a genuine rock classic beloved of Ray Davies, Pete Townshend and The Sex Pistols. This over-processed take, though, fails to capture the soaring joy that can be found in the when you’re gone, how can I even try to go on… line in the original.
Track three then, and the one that represented this E.P. as a whole. ‘Take a Chance on Me’ was an ABBA chart-topper, back in February 1978. It’s an improvement on ‘S.O.S.’, but they’ve gone moodier than the original. They’ve also gone very early-nineties and added a ragga-style rap, or toast, by one MC Kinky. It’s a bold move, but then by this point in the E.P. maybe they were thinking it might have started to feel a bit by-the-numbers. It certainly shakes things up. The video for ‘Take a Chance…’ is the highlight of the entire project: Vince and Andy pout, gurn and flirt with one another, both as themselves and in drag as Agnetha and Frida. I’m sure it was done lovingly, but I do wonder what the ladies thought…
We end on what is probably my favourite of the four: a pounding, throbbing, techno-take on ‘Voulez Vous’. The intro, in fact, isn’t a million miles from something you’d hear at a hardcore rave. Here Erasure succeed in completely updating disco-era ABBA to a 1992 sound, which is testament either to the strength of their interpretation, of Benny and Björn’s songwriting, or maybe both. (‘Voulez Vous’ also includes some of my personal favourite ABBA lyrics: I know what you think, The girl means business so I’ll offer her a drink… and We’ve done it all before, And now we’re back to get some more, You know what I mean…)Years later, a fifth cover – ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!’ – was added to the E.P., but as it wasn’t around when this topped the charts I won’t bring it up.
Are any of the four covers better than the originals? No, of course not. But that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a worthwhile exercise. For a start it got Erasure an overdue #1, after almost a decade of releases and twelve previous Top 10 hits. But even better than that, it started The ABBA Revival.
It seems strange to say in 2023, but even I can remember a time when ABBA weren’t the world’s most beloved band. By the late-eighties they were a punchline, an embarrassment, records to be hidden under the bed rather than publicly displayed. Erasure unashamedly covering four of their hits, allowing kids to discover them and adults to remember just how good ABBA had been, started us down the road to ‘ABBA Gold’ (which was released later in 1992) becoming one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, to ‘Muriel’s Wedding’, to the ‘Mamma Mia’ stage show and films, to the band’s holographic comeback. As a ‘thank you’, ABBA tribute act Björn Again (who in 1992, believe it or not, opened for Nirvana – Kurt Cobain being another factor in the ABBA-naissance) released ‘Erasure-ish’, with covers of ‘A Little Respect’ and ‘Stop!’
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Very astute commentary (as ever…). It might be a bit unkind to suggest that anybody whose household already owns ‘ABBA Gold’ or one of the other compilations probably doesn’t need the Erasure EP as well, but they certainly seem to have done the quartet a service in rescuing them from the filing cabinet marked ‘Guilty Secrets’ or ‘Their Day Has Been And Gone’. They’re rather like a Scandinavian answer to ELO – part of the very fabric of the late 70s, almost beneath contempt in the 80s, and yet a few years later even the most hardened critics admit they really loved their music all the time.
Thanks! I mentioned this in my reply to Max, but it seems to have been a very speedy fall from critical grace and re-discovery. Barely a decade between ABBA having hits, to being personas non gratas, to being reevaluated and loved once more. I didn’t live through it… but a case of musical amnesia??
Heh. We overlap on this post. I would have to say that, Take A Chance On Me, the third track that we both mentioned, was the first release, as the date is the same as the release of the EP…June 1, 1992…as best as I can tell. That being said, the song debuted on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs (a defunct category) and Radio Songs on September 19, 1992 and peaked at #10 & #51, respectively….
https://www.billboard.com/artist/erasure/chart-history/dsi/
https://www.billboard.com/artist/erasure/chart-history/hsb/
The rest of the EP just doesn’t show up in our Billboard.
Yes, I remember you posting this one a few weeks back… 🙂
I wonder if Billboard has different rules for EPs, and they had to choose one track as a single? In the UK it charted as an EP, though Take a Chance on Me probably got most airplay (and had the most eye-catching video). Nowadays EPs go to the album chart – this was one of the last EPs to make number one.
I’m not sure…about Billboard…🤔
I posted a couple of links. I may be in your SPAM folder…possibly…
This is about the time when ABBA was cool to like again. They were not in the 80s and I never understood that…I really like ABBA.
I like their voices fine on these…it’s the beeps I don’t like.
Yes, this was the catalyst for them becoming ‘cool’ again. (Though I’m not sure ABBA are/were ever cool, no matter how much people love them!) I remember even a few years after this, when I was in high school, it wouldn’t have been wise to admit liking ABBA… But maybe that was more an insecure teenage boys thing
In the 80s…the 60s were cool but not the 70s at all. ABBA was at the top of the not cool lists…I said screw it…I like em! As you know…I’m never in step with the times lol.
I understand why you said that…no doubt. Kids are cruel…
I loved them too, from the safety of my own bedroom : )
What’s interesting is how quick it happened. 1992 is only a decade after ABBA split up. Most people buying the Erasure EP would have been alive when these songs were hits the first time!
LOL… hey I was a Beatle fan in the 80s…NOT a cool thing to be until the CDs were realeased in 87 or so.
I know…it’s odd how things like that are. One minute and everything changes. John Travolta…until Pulp Fiction…he was stuck with Saturday Night Fever…in a bad way.
The videos were fun pastiches of Abba videos, but the actual tracks weren’t anywhere near as good as the originals, but it was nice to see Erasure get a number one when Sometimes, Chains Of Love, A Little Respect and especially Blue Savannah all deserved to top the chart.
In terms of Abba, it was probably more that they just stopped without any announcement, and younger acts inspired by them took over – see Bucks Fizz, Human League, Dollar – and teenagers always slag off stuff their parents or older siblings like till they get older and start getting nostalgic for the quality pop. Pop, by it’s very nature, always gets slagged off and especially by males with that macho image to protect in front of their mates. Same nowadays, pop/dance vs rap-based (often) drivel that streams heavily but rarely sells actual records or downloads so they dont bother releasing it in those formats. The split has become even stark, female-vocal pop vs male -based rap for the most part.