ABBA Randomness

Political ABBA??

So I love analysing lyrics and doing research on intended meanings of songs, and through that hobby of mine, I've found that some ABBA songs that just seem to have confusing lyrics are quite political!

Example:

Yep, Soldiers! You can kinda figure out from the title that it may have a political meaning, but you really have to look into it to completely understand what they meant.

With this song, they intended to say that soldiers who do terrible things "in the name of the country" are very often forced to do so by the trashy government. It also says here that it's usually deemed a safer option to stay silent when you're under a bad government, hence the lines:
Let's not look the other way/Taking a chance
Cause if the bugler starts to play/We too must dance

If you take into consideration the whole context of this song that I showed above, you quickly understand that the so called "bugler" is the leader of the nation or the government as a whole. Why the "we too", then? Because now we too, along with the soldiers, have to abide to those leaders, because it's, as I said, the safer option.

Another political song of theirs:

Now unlike Soldiers, The Visitors is very obviously political.
This one is about the mistreatment of people in the Soviet Union by the government. How when people would speak up against their leaders, they would mysteriously go missing. Yeah, that was a real thing!
Another fun fact here: You hear how they keep repeating "crackin' up"? That's because those who spoke out against the Soviet government would be deemed mentally deranged, and it was said that they were cracking up.

Naturally, the Soviet Union didn't like ABBA throwing shade. Like, at all. So, because of political songs such as these, and a TV special "Let Poland Be Poland" that ABBA appeared in, this album was banned in the Soviet Union in 1982!

Doing this kind of research made me realise that ABBA were, very subtly but still, vocal about political problems. And I agree with almost all of their points!