John Wesley Harding knows when he gets an email, phone message or a piece of postal junk addressing him as “John,” it’s coming from someone who’s never met him. He’s known to friends as “Wes,” since his real name (the one he uses in his second career as an award-winning author) is Wesley Stace. Harding’s 15th album, Who Was Changed And Who Was Dead, depicts an artist well aware of what he does best: marvelously witty lyrics delivered in an emotion-wracked singing voice. Harding will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.
John Wesley Harding: Surely the biggest news for pop-pickers everywhere is that the songwriting geniuses behind ABBA—Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus—have unveiled their first pop collaboration for many years. The song, “2nd Best To None,” is sung by the staff of a hotel in Stockholm owned by Andersson. What is wrong with this song? Absolutely nothing. If you like pop music. It sounds exactly like a great ABBA song, despite the fact that—or perhaps (note to Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad) because—it is sung by the employees of a hotel. (Only the employees of the Royalton in NYC are better looking than this bunch, but I bet they can’t sing as well.) The verse is fantastic, marred only by some flamenco guitar, and the only thing I’d change is the thudding Euro-disco drum, but almost all ABBA songs had a thudding Euro-disco drum, so it’s perfect even down to this detail. Not to mention the contorted English of the title—great hook, until you think about it. Hmm. Maybe. Second best? Second to none? Oh, I get it. But you can’t be both at once. Being “second to none” doesn’t redeem being “second best.” I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to be “second best to none”; it’s like when there’s a competition with a prize that none of the entrants is deemed good enough to win.
I saw ABBA conquer Europe on the Eurovision song contest in 1974. I was in a holiday home in Cornwall, aged eight. It was very exciting, and I’ll never forget it. This is exactly what I saw. This was, for sure, my Beatles moment. (I liked the dark one best.) I then saw them live on a TV show for which I happened to be in the audience: There were two bands miming to their songs, and they were one of them. Since then, it hasn’t always been easy being an ABBA fan, unlikely though that now seems. When I started making music and told people I liked Bob Dylan and ABBA, people assumed I was being a smartass. It wasn’t what politically correct people liked back then. Bronski Beat, maybe, but ABBA, not so much. Nowadays, we live in a post-ABBA world: Muriel’s Wedding, Mamma Mia (the musical, the movie, the cereal). But for ABBA purists, I suggest the small purchase of the soundtrack of Chess the musical: music by Andersson and Ulvaeus, lyrics by Tim Rice. And a listen to “2nd Best To None,” which ABBA never was.
