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rfmcdonaldSarah Rodman at the Boston Globe came up with this widely syndicated article.
ABBA's songs continue to endure as what scientists have dubbed "earworms" 35 years after the band's first album was released. Like those little bugs, the tunes burrow into our brains and keep hitting the repeat button.
With all this renewed interest, we wondered if it was possible to break down scientifically why the music is so irresistible. Because even those who profess to dislike the cheery pop of the Swedish masterminds can't block its infiltration into their inner jukebox.
Of course, what makes ABBA songs catchy is to an extent what makes most music memorable, from Bach to the Beatles to the Bernie & Phyl's jingle. But, says Daniel Levitin, author of "This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession" and associate professor at McGill University, there are some individual factors.
"For one thing, the way their songs are performed and produced, quite apart from the underlying composition, gives them an overall catchy sound," says Levitin, a musician and former producer whose forthcoming book, "The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature," further explores the music-mind connection.
The multitracked harmonies of singers Agnetha Faltskog and Frida Lyngstad awaken the part of our brains in which our inner caveman is still enjoying a Paleolithic hootenanny with the rest of his clan.
"If you look at the evolutionary biology of the species and the chemical reactions we have to events in the world, for tens of thousands of years when we as a species heard music we heard groups singing it, not an individual and not an individual standing on a stage," says Levitin. "So the ABBA model of the multiple voices or the Edwin Hawkins Singers singing 'Oh Happy Day' is much closer to stimulating these evolutionary echoes of what music really is, fundamentally - closer than, say, Frank Sinatra or Miley Cyrus."
In other words, if a caveman encased in ice were to be thawed out, revived, and immediately given a full iPod, he would respond more immediately to ABBA or a gospel choir than, say, free jazz. He might eventually dig Ornette Coleman, too, but the presentation of "Knowing Me, Knowing You" would sound more familiar.
The glossy production and compositional patterns of Sweden's fab four (or shall we say "fabelns fyra"?) also set off different neurological reactions that have medicinal powers. In the most upbeat of the group's songs, like "Money, Money, Money," the simplicity of ABBA's lyrics makes them easy to sing along to. In addition to the fizzy melodies, that participation, says Levitin, gives listeners "an even more powerful hit of happy juice in the brain from dopamine."
With sad songs in general, and in ABBA's case specifically with tracks like the more contemplative "The Winner Takes It All," listeners' brains produce an opposite but equally enjoyable reaction.
"You get the comfort hormone of prolactin when you hear sad music," says Levitin. "That's the same hormone that's released when mothers nurse their babies. It's soothing. And sometimes it's lyrics and sometimes it's music. I think it's most powerful when the two are well matched and you get what I would call an emergent property where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
