Thank You For The Music: From shag anthems to funeral songs, Tracey's legendary taste in tunes knows no bounds
Particularly when our Super Trouper hits Stockholm
It's recently become apparent that I do not have the world's best taste in music. I realised this when my biggest fear last year was my Spotify Unwrapped going public. On our recent walking trip in Greece, I was having a lovely time listening to the greatest hits of a young Phil Collins only to be ridiculed by Rhonda Carrier about my tragic taste in music. “Sussudio is the only acceptable Collins song” she sighed. But Against All Odds, I powered on regardless.
Celine, Whitney, Mariah, Shania – these are my queens of my Spotify playlists. I consider them the Wayward Wimmin of Pop and their tunes have been the much loved soundtrack to my life. My first snog was to Whitney Houston's The Greatest Love of All. Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive got me over my first heartbreak. And I've shagged to Shania on more than one occasion.
I recently informed Rhonda that I would like Starmaker by The Kids from Fame performed at my funeral. If you don't know it, check it out on YouTube. It's epic.
Part of my funeral planning states that I would like to be propped up in an armchair in my best dress while my closest friends and family sing Starmaker to my smiling corpse. Not weird. Not weird at all.
Studies have shown that musical tastes are formed in our youth. Which explains a lot - my first record was The Ugly Duckling by Mike Reid (a.k.a Frank Butcher from Eastenders) and I played it on repeat for a good six months. It also explains why I am, unashamedly, a lifelong ABBA fan. Ever since they won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 in my hometown of Brighton, I've been obsessed with the flared four – so much so that my son's middle name is Björn (true fact). So it was only a matter of time until I brought him to the mothership, ABBA: The Museum in Stockholm.
As the doors open and the first bars of Dancing Queen ring out from the lobby, my stomach flips, a lump forms in my throat and my eyes fill with hot, salty tears. Crikey, I wasn't expecting my arrival at my own Ground Zero to feel quite this poignant. I look at Angus – who is mortified at my reaction – he rolls his eyes and says “I knew it would get emotional.”
Of course, there's only one place for the true ABBA fan to stay – Pop House Hotel on Djurgården. The hotel is owned by Björn Ulvaeus and sits above ABBA: The Museum. We’re staying in the appropriately named Mamma Mia suite, which has been decked out like Donna's Greek villa; all wicker furniture, a fairy-lit pergola and pots of clashing pink begonias.
I've been desperate to visit ABBA: The Museum since it opened in 2013 and I can barely wait a minute longer. Dumping our bags, we descend the stairs to the strains of Does Your Mother Know and already Angus is tiring, concerned that I'm going to embarrass him by crying...or even worse, singing.
The museum is packed to the rafters with ABBA memorabilia as it takes you on an interactive journey from their early years when they were solo artists through to the modern day and the creation of the ABBAtars for Voyage. The first tears arrive when I rewatch them win Eurovision in Brighton with Waterloo. It takes me back to when I was small and my parents had bought the single from Woolworths and played it on their Sanyo HiFi system over and over again. I had no chance, really. Nor did my son, who seems to know all the words.
I duck into the recording booth, where my version of Chiquitita renders young Björn speechless, and generally soak up every single photo, costume and kitsch memorabilia from the past 50 years. “Mum, you're going to scream when you see what's in the next room,” he grins. It's a stage with holograms of Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Frida along with an extra microphone for me. I perform an enthusiastic rendition of Dancing Queen followed with an encore of Mamma Mia, complete with head turns in time with Frida and Agnetha. Angus looks on with tears of pride. Well, I think it's pride...
Our Swedish pilgrimage is not only contained to Djurgården. We hop on the tram to Gamla Stan. We have no particular aim and instead enjoy wandering through the medieval cobbled streets, past rhubarb-and-custard-hued gabled houses where I like to imagine hunky horned Vikings waving fiery torches as they rampage around Stortorget, Stockholm's oldest public square.
If we had more time I'd have popped into The Nobel Prize Museum to pick about the inner thoughts of creative minds, seen the wooden St George & The Dragon statue in Stockholm Cathedral or visited Stockholm Palace, the official residence of the other Swedish royal family.
But we’re here to learn about ABBA’s Stockholm and so we enlist the services of local Elisabeth Daude who takes us on a guided walking tour of the band’s key sights. After meeting at the hotel, Elisabeth takes us across the road to Skansen, the world's oldest open-air museum, which is like a spin on a time machine through Swedish history.
One of the highlights of the weekend was recreating some of ABBAs most iconic album covers. I quietly ask Elisabeth to take us to Kronbergs ateljé, the studio of Swedish painter, Julius Kronberg (1850-1921), which was donated to Skansen after his death. I recognise it immediately from The Visitors, their last studio album released in 1981, which features the group in front of his painting of Eros, and force Angus to have a similar picture taken.
After leaving Skansen, Elisabeth takes us around Djurgården pointing out other key sights from Gröna Lund, Sweden's oldest amusement park, where ABBA performed in 1973, Villa Ekarne, where their manager, Stig Anderson lived, and finally Ulla Winbladh, where Angus and I replicate the famous bench photo outside.
An ABBA fan for half a century, I feel quite emotional sat on their bench. My pilgrimage to Stockholm has been everything I wanted it to be. And when the young Björn concurs, albeit reluctantly, I feel like the Winner that Takes It All.
BOOM!