Fernando

A Song by ABBA

By: Kay Dickinson

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Paperback | 30 September 2025

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Paperback
160 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
17.78 x 17.78

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Since its release in 1976, ABBA's song "Fernando" has been loved by fans around the globe, both for its sing-along chorus and its revolutionary spirit. In Fernando, Kay Dickinson takes readers from Sweden and Chile to Australia and Poland, tracing the complicated ways the song could express support with anti-capitalist and Third World liberation struggles while remaining an unrepentant commodity. A song about freedom fighters was unlikely to become a pop mega-hit, yet, as Dickinson demonstrates, ABBA's lucrative, longstanding appeal rests on their ability to bridge contradictions within everyday life. Five decades later, "Fernando's" rousing calls for freedom continue to resonate with gay liberation movements and other social struggles, demonstrating how a song can both be revolutionary and an envoy for global capital.

Industry Reviews

"In this deeply researched analysis, Kay Dickinson approaches 'Fernando' as a rich and complex text, exemplifying tensions between revolution and global commodification. In applying sociopolitical, musicological, and technological lenses to 'Fernando,' Dickinson's book is a deftly woven, insightful, and highly engaging critical appraisal of one of ABBA's greatest hits." - Samantha Bennett, Professor of Music, The Australian National University "ABBA's 'Fernando' winked at legibility, seduced the world with multitracked layers of improbable connection. Kay Dickinson's Fernando sees the song as a marketed revolution in her study's A side, revolutionary marketing on its flip, and without clarifying squat renders each and every one of those layers a semiotic postcard." - Eric Weisbard, author of Songbooks: The Literature of American Popular Music

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