Chicago Schlager Saturday: When ABBA Was Schlager

The Swedish internationally acclaimed pop-group, ABBA actually started out with a number of schlager songs in their repertoire.

Bjorn Ulvaeus, the lead guitarist and co-composer of many of their songs, had his roots in an American-styled folk group in the 60s and easily slid over into the European variant of that.

Ulvaeus co-composed a sentimental schlager tune which they entitled, "Hasta Manana", after their manager Stig Anderson hastily worked up some English lyrics for it.

They almost performed this schlager offering in their 1974 debut performance in the Eurovision competition, but at the last minute decided to go with their soft rock pop song "Waterloo."

They won that competition and Waterloo became their first international pop hit.

But their career almost took a schlager music turn and could have had an entirely different result.

Here is the schlager tune, "Hasta Manana" which ABBA almost performed in the 1974 Eurovision competition:



For a more detailed version of this story with videos of ABBAs 1974 Eurovision performance go to The Chicago Schlager Music Review.

Lena Meyer-Landrut: Testament To American Cultural Imperialism

Is Lena Meyer-Landrut a pouty American teenage girl from Glencoe, Illinois?

No. She is the grandaughter of an aristocratic West German Ambassador and a Hungarian duchess. And she just won the Eurovision song competition representing Germany.

The annual Eurovision contest is a really big deal throughout Europe. It is their version of American Idol, except on a far larger scale. Each country has its own competition to choose its most talented singing act and the Eurovision contest supposedly selects the best Europe has to offer.

People cheer on their own nation's entrant as they do their soccer team in the World Cup.

In the past, the winners would generally represent something unique to their own national culture and traditions. When ABBA won the Eurovision award in 1974, while it was a rock group with general appeal, Benny Andersson's keyboard work had a distinctly Swedish sound and Agnetha and Frida sang with a charming Swedish lilt.

But the cute, pouty, Anglophonic German ingenue mimicked American black ghetto gestures and bounced around like any spoiled suburban brat on a night out club-hopping in the River North district of Chicago.

With this she won Europe's culturally iconic competition last year in Oslo, Norway.

Her winning song "Satellite" was co-written by an American, her gestures are black ghetto American, she chants (hip-hop isn't really sung)in a combo of American English with a slight cockneyfied British edge.

The socialists abroad always decried American "cultural imperialism."

Now I join them.