ABBA's reunion, Boyzlife's India gig — and our continuing enthusiasm for 'retro' pop music

Editor’s note: In this fortnightly column, noted music writer Amit Gurbaxani dwells (sometimes whimsically) on all things musical. Presenting — Musicology.

Two acts, two very different reactions. Last week, pop legends ABBA informed the world that they had reunited after 35 years and recorded two new songs that they will release at the end of the year. The announcement was met with a wave of euphoria around the globe and in India where social media users went into a frenzy, almost every print and digital news publication covered the development, and even butter brand Amul felt it was big enough of a deal to mark with a hoarding .

After all, ABBA fans had reconciled themselves to the idea that a reunion was never going to happen. In comparison, the news that Boyzlife , a duo made up of former members of 1990s Irish boy bands Boyzone and Westlife, would be touring India this month barely made a blip on your average pop music fan’s radar. A friend in fact expressed sadness that two of our youth’s biggest acts were reduced, quite literally, to a fraction of their past. This was quite a contradiction to the celebratory response received by ABBA.

The Swedish superstars made it clear that despite the fresh music, they don’t plan to perform together ever again. Consequently, their Indian devotees’ dreams of watching them live in our country will remain unfulfilled. On the other hand, it’s not surprising that Boyzlife will be here so soon after their formation in 2016. Because we are a nation that unequivocally and unabashedly loves its retro pop.

For some 1990s kids like me, just learning about the existence of Boyzlife makes us somewhat uncomfortable: Are Boyzone and Westlife already retro? The answer, of course, is yes and they have been for a few years now. I asked RJ Erica D’Souza, who presents the popular Drive Mumbai on Radio One 94.3FM, the only English music station in my home city, about what she believes qualifies as retro. She classifies tunes into four categories: tracks from the 1970s and ’80s are classic or vintage; those from the 1990s to 2005 are retro; and the rest are current (anything from 2006 to up to five years ago) or hot (whatever’s on the charts at the moment).

For all practical purposes, classic, vintage and retro is the same thing. Using D’Souza’s timeline and presuming that we start being familiarised with pop music from the age of two — just ask a toddler to sing the words to ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen for proof — a 15-year-old Gen-Z guy or girl could legitimately feel nostalgic about music they first heard in 2005. Therefore, today, not only is Westlife retro, so is 50 Cent (presuming again, a two-year-old was allowed to listen to 50 Cent).

In India, in particular, the appetite for retro pop and rock seems insatiable. For instance, it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that in Mumbai, the playlists of the city’s longest-running stand-alone pubs, Toto’s Garage (which opened in 1992) and The Ghetto (which followed in 1993), have pretty much remained the same since the day they opened, apart from a few accommodations for a handful of massive hits from the nineties and aughties.

For a national perspective, take a gander at the top rock songs chart on iTunes India. At any given time, the top-10 is very likely to include either ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles (released in 1976), ‘Summer Of ’69’ by Bryan Adams (1984), ‘Nothing Else Matters’ by Metallica (1991), ‘It’s My Life’ by Bon Jovi (2000) or ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ by Guns N’ Roses (1987), tracks that also have a permanent place of the playlists of the aforementioned pubs and in the set lists of the kinds of cover bands that dominate the rosters of the country’s Hard Rock Cafes and the like.

The pop songs chart is relatively more current but the pop albums chart is glittered with such compilations as 100 Retro Hits, 100 Hits of the 80s, Take On Me 80s The Collection and Essential The 80s. No prizes for guessing the most popular decade for English pop in India. A week before Boyzlife, French disco duo Ottawan, known for ’80s dance floor favourites ‘DISCO’ and ‘Hands Up’, will visit our country for the second time, for a concert in Mumbai.

The gig has been organised by a company called KCT Entertainment, which holds most of their shows at the Phoenix MarketCity chain of malls in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai in addition to other venues in Goa, Bengaluru and Delhi. Since 2014, KCT has helmed tours by Boney M, UB40, Mr Big’s Eric Martin and the Vengaboys as well as those by the tribute bands ABBA Gold, Bee Geez, Classic Clapton, Killer Queen, The Elton John Experience and Them Beatles. Boyzlife’s trek, incidentally, has been put together by Percept Live, best known as the folks behind electronic music festival Sunburn.

The ‘About Us’ section of Experience The Legends, one of the Facebook pages KCT Entertainment’s founder Dereyk Teller uses to promote the company’s events, states: V TRY R BEST TO GIVE U THE EXPRIENCE OF THE ORIGINALS- IF THEY DONT EXIST AS A GROUP SPLIT OR DEAD OR DONT WANNA EVER TOUR INDIA- SO ENJOY THE EXPERIENCE [capitals and lack of punctuation theirs>.

The choice of the word “Experience” is notable because except for UB40 (three of whose former members have another group also called UB40 ) and the Vengaboys (if they can be called a group) — most of these original acts have just one founding member. Boney M has Liz Mitchell; Ottawan has none.

Ottawan’s last trip, in 2016, interestingly, was part of KCT Entertainment’s Rewind The 80s Festival that also featured Kaoma, the French-Brazilian one-hit wonders remembered for the global 1989 smash ‘Lambada’, which you might have heard in an elevator somewhere. To be fair, KCT isn’t just bringing old-fashioned acts here. In February, they staged a gig by British pop singer and social media star HRVY.

Now Rewind The 80s Festival happens to be the name of a much larger event, held annually in the UK. Billy Ocean, Gipsy Kings, Kim Wilde, Kool and the Gang, Tiffany and UB40 are among those who will play the 10th anniversary edition of Rewind , which is evidence that retro pop enjoys large audiences even in developed live music markets such as the UK.

Maybe the reason we’re getting so many retro concerts these days is because we finally have the purchasing power for international acts to seriously consider India as a touring stop, and because some of these bands need to explore new markets. Never mind that the Phoenix MarketCity shows, which are held in an indoor courtyard surrounded by concrete, don’t have the best acoustics. Or that some of these groups, such as the Vengaboys, perform to backing tracks instead of an actual band. What matters more is the sense of nostalgia evoked, which seems to override all the other shortcomings.

The Vengaboys, incidentally, amassed the largest turnout until date at Phoenix MarketCity in Mumbai, which has a standing capacity of 2,500. For all the flak pop gets for being formulaic and throwaway, to a lot of people, even the most bubblegum variety represents cherished memories.

Amit Gurbaxani is a Mumbai-based journalist who has been writing about music, specifically the country’s independent scene, for nearly two decades. He tweets  @TheGroovebox