ABBA has a new album and I think it's terrible

Mamma miaaa, I probably have a not so popular opinion. The last time I openly said that I can't handle ABBA, my father looked at me as if he suddenly wanted to disinherit me. No joke. Everyone is thrilled that there is finally some decent music on the market again, and I don't want to hear a second of the album. Which is, of course, impossible, because it seems like only Adele and ABBA still exist.

The worst part of ABBA's new album isn't even that there are new songs from the cheerful quartet, but that every radio station in the world is shuffling the old songs again. Why, why? That they have new music is more than enough. I don't need a reminder of how it all came about back in the seventies.

Where all this fuss comes from, you might want to know? ABBA strikes a very sensitive chord with me that irritates me deep inside. The music is just not gloomy enough, but it also never builds up to a never climax. You sit there waiting for minutes for the roof to blow off, but no. It fades out like a tea light where the wick sinks into the wax. No beat that picks up speed, no note that is higher than the rest: nothing. I find ABBA's music one gigantic anticlimax. There, you have it.

By the way, it's as if someone up there wants to mock me in the meantime, because while I'm typing this, a new song from the buddies is blasting out of the speakers. Here we go again and again and again. I know it: I am a cultural barbarian.

Of course, I have seen all parts of the Mamma Mia films (even the most cringeworthy) in which Meryl Streep and co. run along a Greek pier accompanied by ABBA. My love for Greece even surpasses my aversion to ABBA, allowing me to listen to it for a whole mountain climb.

The Swedes have been holding out in the list of lists for almost 50 years. The new album Voyage contains ten (!) fresh songs. All in all, this is a calculation that is going to turn out particularly unfavorable for me. S.O.S., guys.