Ostensibly cheerful but packed with drama and peppered with Scandinavian melancholy, the Stockholm mixed-gender quartet’s pop has blueprinted the glitz of countless gay and gay-friendly acts from Kylie Minogue to Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert to Lil Nas X - a singular achievement for a band that hadn’t completed an album in 40 years. Thanks to multiple stage and screen incarnations of “Mamma Mia!,” fabulously garish costumes from gay designer Owe Sandström and consummately crafted songs more retroactively popular than in their ’70s and early ’80s heyday, ABBA has for decades been the bull’s-eye of the LGBTQ musical universe. Donald Trump and his followers may have for a time claimed the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” and “Macho Man” for themselves, but there’s no way they’ll take this one from us. It’s our variation on what fans do at ballgames when their team is winning, but with a camp exuberance ignited by the song’s brassy harmonies and handy references to feminine royalty. Gay revelers (and their lucky straight friends) are waving their arms, striking ingenue poses and shamelessly singing along to the sugary 45-year-old pop standard that’s become synonymous with queer nightlife. Somewhere, right now, ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” is playing at an LGBTQ club, bar or house party.
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