“Sick and tired of everything”: the depressing pop lyrics that gave Glasgow a musical anthem
Beautiful architecture, Tennent’s lager, and Billy Connolly’s big banana feet; the great city of Glasgow has made countless cultural contributions to the world, particularly within its musical realm.
Whether it’s in the indie rock sound that blossomed throughout the city during the 1980s, the timeless folk music which can still be heard in its many pubs and clubs, or any number of the colossal pop stars who have called Glasgow their home, the city has always boasted a particularly rich music scene. Bizarrely, then, the one song that Glaswegians seem to take to heart more than any other actually paints a rather depressing picture of the city.
A late-period triumph for the Swedish pop sensation, ‘Super Trouper’ ended up becoming one of Abba’s all-time biggest hits, topping the singles charts of the UK, Ireland, and vast swathes of mainland Europe, too. A core part of that success, at least in the surrounding area of Lanarkshire, likely came from the first two lines of the first verse: “I was sick and tired of everything/When I called you last night from Glasgow.”
If you have had the pleasure of witnessing the song being played in Glasgow, you will be all too aware of Glaswegians’ inherent need to belt out those specific lines with a booming sense of civic pride and an intensity which quickly fades throughout the rest of the song.
Admittedly, that fact is not all that surprising. After all, it is easy to see how having your city name-dropped in a song as colossal and international as ‘Super Trouper’ could be a source of local pride – particularly when the song in question is being performed by a group as universally beloved as Abba.
If you take a step back and actually examine the lyrics, though, the city pride that surrounds those lyrics has the same energy as feeling overjoyed when your local town is mentioned on the national news as a result of some horrific crime or natural disaster.
“I was sick and tired of everything,” sings Anni-Frid Lyngstad, “When I called you last night from Glasgow.” That hardly suggests that Lyngstad – or Björn Ulvaeus, who wrote the line – was overjoyed with their surroundings in Glasgow. On the contrary, it seems as though the Scottish city was a source of despair and depression for the band, with ‘Super Trouper’ employing it to evoke the heartbreak and loss of Ulvaeus’ failing marriage to Agnetha Faltskog.
Then again, it could certainly be argued that Ulvaeus’ heartbreak wasn’t a reflection of the city of Glasgow itself. “Björn was in Glasgow for some Abba promotion,” saxophonist Ulf Andersson once revealed of the lyric’s origins. “It was around the time they were about to separate. He wrote the lyrics and Agnetha sings it, but really it was meant to be from him.”
Perhaps if Ulvaeus had taken the time to marvel at the city’s Victorian architecture, take a stroll round the Necropolis or botanical gardens, or even drown his sorrows in the many marvellous pubs of the Dear Green Place, the city would have a far more upbeat lyric to hang its appreciation on.
As it stands, though, Ulvaeus has to reckon with the fact that – should Abba ever return in non-hologram form – he will have to deal with one of the most gut-wrenching, heartbroken lyrics he ever wrote being proudly screamed back at him by the entire population of Glasgow. In many ways, that very fact is far more beautiful than anything that Abba could have written in the first place.
