ABBA’s bittersweet ode to the New Year only gets better with age

"Happy New Year" didn't get much of a release in 1980, but it's endured as a timeless hit around the globe.

Mark

Jan 1, 2024 - 19:00

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ABBA’s bittersweet ode to the New Year only gets better with age

Image Credit: “Happy New Year,’ ABBA | Polar Music International AB

Saturday Night Live was in a silly seasonal spirit for its last episode of 2023, delivering a fake infomercial for ABBA’s “unreleased” 1978 holiday album, ABBA Christmas.

The hilarious sketch was basically an excuse to have SNL MVP Bowen Yang, episode host Kate McKinnon, and returning all-stars Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig trot out their intentionally shaky Swedish accents and sing very, very close to one another’s faces—as ABBA is wont to do.

But real fans know that the Swedish pop quartet never actually had a Christmas album (though we do wish “Frostitita” was real).

Despite that fact that their sentimental, sing-song-y style feels perfectly suited to the holiday, the band didn’t release an official yuletide track until “Little Things” off their long-awaited 2021 album Voyage.

Instead, the one holiday ABBA did celebrate with a song back in their heyday was New Year’s Day on a number titled (fittingly) “Happy New Year,” initially released in 1980 on their album Super Trouper.

As the story goes, the track was first penned by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus for an original musical—one they had been dreaming up featuring a story that would play out in the lead up to and aftermath of a New Year’s Eve party.

Yes, long before the smash success of Mamma Mia!—and the subsequent movies—the men of ABBA were interested in crafting a musical drama all their own. It’s said they even pitched their New Year’s Eve idea to John Cleese, hoping the Monty Python star would write the book for the show, but he turned them down. (Don’t sweat it though: They’d have success on the stage just a few years later with the rock opera Chess).

While the musical was scrapped, something about “Happy New Year” stuck with Benny and Björn, so they decided to record it for their seventh studio album, Super Trouper, using it to kick off Side Two of the LP.

Agnetha Fältskog takes the lead on the vocals, singing wistfully about that familiar sadness we all get when the party’s over. “No more champagne / And the fireworks are through / Here we are, me and you / Feeling lost and feeling blue.” Been there!

Compared to some of the band’s more dance-floor-ready fare, it’s a mostly downtempo and somber affair. (The lyric, “the dreams we had before are all dead, nothing more than the confetti on the floor” is a particularly depressing standout). But things really pick up when the chorus hits, which sounds readymade for a sing-along as Anni-Frid Lyngstad joins in to harmonize.

The video—lensed by ABBA’s frequent collaborator (and future Oscar nominee) Lasse Hallström—follows suit, cutting between an empty, post-party apartment during the verses and then a joyous scene of costumed revelry at every chorus.

Though “Happy New Year” only received a very limited release as a single in Sweden at the end of 1980, it would go on to have second, third, and fourth lives around the globe.

A Spanish-language version of the song, “Felicidad,” became a Top 5 charting hit in Argentina, a 1999 re-release celebrating the new millennium found success across Europe, and it’s said to be especially popular in Vietnam, where it’s played at nearly every New Year’s Eve celebration.

In a way, that’s the benefit of recording holiday-specific singles: They come back in style, year after year, and suddenly a 40-year-old song is climbing the charts again (Case in point: “Happy New Year” was the 32nd best-selling vinyl single in the U.K. last year.)

But ABBA’s cautiously optimistic ode to the New Year has only gotten better—and more relevant—with age. As we stare down the barrel of global-warming, anxiously brace ourselves for the 2024 presidential election, and try to keep our spirits high despite the constant soul-crushing news cycle, it’s a song that acknowledges the harsh realities of our world and reminds us why we press on regardless.

“Happy New Year, Happy New Year / May we all have a vision now and then / Of a world where every neighbor is a friend… May we all have our hopes, our will to try / If we don’t we might as well lay down and die.”

All little blunt? Maybe! But leave it to ABBA to deliver a bittersweet ode to the new year that’s feels timeless and hopeful, even if nothing else is certain.