Word: abba
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Eurovision, which most famously gave the world ABBA, is a much-anticipated annual pop music competition with contestants representing countries from Iceland to Turkey, from Morocco to Israel. No one takes the contest more seriously than the Russians. Last year, for example, they sneered when Ireland's representative in the Eurovision finals was a hand puppet named Dustin the Turkey. Russia's own contestant was Dima Bilan, a star so established that a BBC commentator sniped that it was as if Britain had sent Amy Winehouse to the competition (well, if she was allowed to travel). Bilan...
...them as romantic pirates: It's out and out theft," John Kennedy, top executive of the international music industry body IFPI, told The Guardian. Big-name artists, too, have weighed in. Prince has threatened to sue, and this week one of the founders of the Swedish super group ABBA denounced the site as a gift to those who want to be "lazy and mean." "It is easier and cheaper to steal than to download legally." Bjorn Ulvaeus wrote in an online Swedish op-ed. "Is it really so damn difficult to pay your...
...tell from the hooks. Produced by Greg Kurstin of the retro-pop duo the Bird and the Bee, the music robs every genre it can in the pursuit of anything that might stick in your ears. There's a klezmer-inspired accordion that morphs into a glossy Abba-worthy chorus on "Never Gonna Happen" and an intro that sounds like an electronic version of "Rawhide" on "Not Fair," all of which succeeds in creating enough of a melodic diversion to make you forget that the songs are split-timed and almost mechanically verse-chorus-verse...
...Sheldon Keller, 85, was one of the crazy-gifted kids who wrote for Sid Caesar and Your Show of Shows; later he won a Writers Guild Award for the Hollywood parody Movie Movie and co-authored the movie Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, remade with ABBA songs as Mamma Mia! Many a memorable MGM musical - Meet Me in St. Louis, Yolanda and the Thief, Ziegfeld Follies and (uncredited) The Wizard of Oz - sprang from the typewriter of Irving Brecher, 94. After writing the Bye Bye Birdie screenplay, Brecher began a retirement that lasted 45 years. I wish the same...
...What They're Watching in the U.K.: Perhaps it was inevitable. Mamma Mia!, the Golden Globe--nominated Abba songfest starring Meryl Streep, has become the all-time highest-grossing movie in the U.K., bumping 1997's Titanic from the top spot. The movie, while still in theatrical release after 23 weeks, also bested Titanic in DVD sales, with 1.7 million copies sold on its first day. The musical has been playing on London stages since...