Strip ABBA of their catchiness and focus on their songwriting. Ring Ring is what you get, and nobody wants that. A tight collection of pop songs, that’s all you could ask of the Swedish pop sensations. Their avatars are hardly going to break out into Nina, Pretty Ballerina. Those wanting that still need to head all the way back to Ring Ring, a title which lends itself to the opening song. It’s a track which summarises ABBA best of all. Once you’ve heard one, you’ve heard it all. But that’s to ABBA’s advantage here. We expect very little for the four-piece not because they cannot offer more but because the upbeat, piano rock fundamentals of their sound and the addition of Europop sincerity is so likeable. Why change a formula that works so well when the band excel at it? Because even with their understanding of pop fundamentals, any artist who cannot offer more than that is relegated to the bargain bin, the pub disco, as ABBA has been.
That’s not a knock at the band, though. They were excellent at what they did but what they did was make mass appeal tracks with very little deeper meaning. Surface level tensions and even then light enough to not affect the toe-tapping quality of the songs. Another Town, Another Train is exactly the problem. Spending your life in railway stations is a nice line, but to what end? Where does it take? There’s no blood on these tracks, no trains, even. All that to say it’s a song which could have a hearty message for its listener but it backs away as it toys with this very drab writing style, something which would affect the album songs of ABBA their whole careers. It’s the singles which stand out because they at least have an exciteable quality behind them which masks the lack of lyrical spectacle. Disillusion is a letdown, a waste of a strong guitar line.
But that sounds magnificent compared to the sickeningly twee People Need Love. ABBA would lean into that sound a little more, an upbeat wall of sound which conjures the smell of mints and the shallow warmth of being embraced by a Eurovision hopeful. ABBA are testing the waters across Ring Ring, and that’s fair enough. They lean into soft rock on I Saw It in the Mirror, arguably one of their deepest songs but even then, lacking that knockout blow. Relatively tame takes on domesticity with Nina, Pretty Ballerina is neither shocking nor out there for ABBA. They kept things simple and it’s hard to imagine weeping or waltzing to any of the songs featured on Ring Ring, just enjoying them for the escapism they provide is good enough. But that’s a one-time ticket, and ABBA would cash that particular chip several times.
Soppy, ugly-sounding songs like Love Isn’t Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough) are playing around with a style even The Beach Boys would’ve turned their nose up at. Padding what few moments of interest there are with this underwhelming piano piece and a switch-up of admittedly strong vocal work. But a singer is only as good as the songwriter, and there the latter is a ballast to the talents ABBA would rely on so often. Ring Ring falls apart on the B-side, an annoying collection of throwaway tracks. Vaguely likeable the A-side of Ring Ring may be, the drop-off found on She’s My Kind of Girl removes all remaining goodwill for ABBA’s debut. It goes from likeably light to pathetic riffs on what was popular at the time, with no innovation or interest in next steps for the song to be found. Poor work, but then that wouldn’t be the last time ABBA offered such shoddy penmanship.
