18 June 1992
I’ve always thought I should like Erasure more. Some of their songwriting is really good: ‘Oh L’Amour’ and ‘A Little Respect’ are solid pop tunes. It’s just that their finished product is bland and boring: a single Casio hi-NRG setting let gallop across fields of astroturf. And now they’re taking on the shimmering, whirling, undulating pop genius of classic ABBA? That strikes me as a bad idea in theory. How is it in practice?
Well, yeah, it’s a bad idea in practice too. The thing most people remember from this batch of Erasure ABBA covers is Vince Clarke and Andy Bell dressing up as Agnetha and Frida in their video for ‘Take A Chance On Me’, which goes to show how drab and unmemorable the music was. This was the year that the ABBA revival kicked off, with the subsequent release of the ABBA Gold compilation, so there was clearly a gust of zeitgeist helping Erasure’s EP to number one in the UK, Ireland and ABBA’s homeland of Sweden. However, it all just sounds so cheap and plastic: a poor man’s Pet Shop Boys in a rich man’s world.
