Abba's "Dancing Queen

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how "Dancing Queen" by Abba is a prominent example of the popular music of the 1970s. It also discusses how, as opposed to the scientific view on the popular culture, represented by Theodor Adorno and Barbara Tepa Lupack, that suggests the male domination in leisure culture, the dance pop of that time, in particular, ABBA's music, can be distinguished by its highlighting of gender equality and appreciation of expressive and balanced individuality.

Outline:
Introduction.
Musical Analysis of "Dancing Queen".
Elimination of Androcentrism in the Song.
General Discussion of the Disco/Dance Party Culture.
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The song is composed of three verses and three choruses. The chorus is "You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen/ Dancing queen, feel the beat of the tambourine/ You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life/ See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen" (Abba, Dancing Queen, 1975). The chorus melodically differs from the verse, but does not contrast the latter harmonically, as it is perceived as an accelerated and highlighted verse melody. As for the rhythm, the song represents the classical thirty-two bar form, or AABA, in which the A-section is harmonically self-sufficient and cadences on the tonic, whereas the B section is the so-called "middle eight", that seems more harmonically open the previous section but necessarily contains a smooth transitional notes that allow switching to the A-part again. The song writers used regular AABA, which is, however, elaborated by rhyming parts inside the line: queen-seventeen / queen - tambourine/ jive - life / scene - queen. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• ABBA. (1975). Dancing Queen.
• Potiez, J. (2000). Abba- The Book. Aurum Press.
• Lupack, Barbara Tepa. Vision/Re-vision: Adapting Contemporary American Fiction by Women to Film. (1994). In Streetwalking on a Ruined Map. Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari, Princeton, pp. 1-44.
• Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. (2001). Dialectics of Enlightenment. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. University of Oklahoma Press, pp. 1220-1240.
• Whitman, B. (2005). Learning the Meaning of Music. Columbia University Press.

More papers on Abba's "Dancing Queen:

• Term Paper # 144899 : "The Reign of Queen Elizabeth II"
• Book Review # 126417 : "'The Dancing Bear' and Figurative Language"
• Film Review # 123579 : "'The Queen' and Feminist Critical Theory"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: