So what’s the deal with the ABBA pastiche? Why ABBA?
Glad you asked.
When ABBA first came out, I didn’t pay much attention to them. They seemed sort of cloying and inconsequential, and a little awkward. Their harmony so smiley face and ever-consonant, their rhythms so martial and square, their lyrics so earnest and English-as-a-second-language and malaprop-prone. The sound didn’t quite fit the Anglo-American pop ideal. Like they just didn’t get it. But then the catchiness won me over, and all those flaws became charming, and disarming. It was I who hadn’t got it.
A few years ago, it occurred to me to make an ABBA pastiche. Originally it was going to be in the form Verse -Chorus – Chorus – Verse (A-B-B-A), with an A-B-B-A rhyme scheme. But that proved too much effort, or just not a very good idea.
Meanwhile, I had a title for a song about all the different musical genres I like to work in. “Little Bit of This, Little Bitta That.” Each phrase of the song would be in a different genre.
But I also had this piece of music kicking around on my hard drive, that had been inspired by Japanese pop music from the early 2000s. (J-pop itself shares something with ABBA.)
So I used the J-pop-inspired music and made the ABBA pastiche be celebrating musical eclecticism. (The song with each phrase in a different genre became another song, “Bad Timing.”)
The Balladry & Soliloquy album (Anthems & Antithets Volume 2) was focused on heartfelt personal songs. But I didn’t want it to be all mopey singer-songwriter acoustic numbers. I wanted some lively stuff too. “Little Bitta This” was personal to me – my manifesto about not being tied down to one genre. And certainly lively.
I couldn’t have found better people to sing it than Kathi Funston & Tulasi Rain. I love working with both of them, they’re my go-to vocalists. And luckily both of them had grown up singing ABBA. Kathi channeled her inner Agnetha, with every inflection and a delightful hint of a Swedish accent. And together Kathi and Tulasi had great musical chemistry.
Of course, it needed to be more than a song. It had to be a video too. So I worked with Deb Hiett, a longtime collaborator, who helped on the concepts and the directing, and came up with a lot of great gags. We had a blast watching ABBA music videos, with their white cyclorama backdrops, un-choreographed dancing and sudden freeze frames. Kathi and Tulasi are both fun and funny performers who work really well together. Add to them the foil of my son Moss Woodbury as “Lars” the Benny/Björn side-kick figure.