Song of the Week, 2011-005 - Happy New Year, by Abba

It is Chinese New year, so this week won't miss with a new year song. There are actually three candidates, and it's a tough decision, but here it is, one of the best new year songs, Happy New Year by Abba.

"Happy New Year", something we say almost every year, somehow I feel that it implies a "not-so-good" if not a "bad" year has just passed. In order to regain one's morale, the start of a year is marked as the point where everything will start afresh, and all those happened will be left behind. It is a vision we long for, and a self-comforting statment. I don't know if it is good or bad, but sometimes I do think that as much as we like to say "learn from history, learn from past, learn from experience", "forgetfulness" is one of the most powerful weapons of human.

We make mistake, we regret, we learn the lesson, then we forget. Some people say it is the vicious cycle of human nature. However isn't this view of a "vicious cycle" only valid when we assume a progressive human development? In a time where we love to reflect upon ourselves, where we love to go nostalgic, where we praise the glory of our past, can we still confidently say that human development is progressive? Or we just simply change the way of our lives?

However there is one thing I can be sure of, this vision of progress is what take us where we are now. And I don't see there is any way that we will be able to shake this vision away. So maybe we just have to live with it. After all time progresses whether we progress or not, Happy New Year.

p.s. I'm not sure when they wrote this song, but the release year of it is 1980 where the two members of Abba, Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog, divorced (exactly the two in the beginning of the MV). I wonder if the lyrics is somehow linked to themselves, where they felt sad but were trying to stay positive with a "Happy New Year".

Happy New Year, Abba

No more champagne
And the fireworks are through
Here we are, me and you
Feeling lost and feeling blue
It's the end of the party
And the morning seems so grey
So unlike yesterday
Now's the time for us to say...

*Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don't we might as well lay down and die
You and I*

Sometimes I see
How the brave new world arrives
And I see how it thrives
In the ashes of our lives
Oh yes, man is a fool
And he thinks he'll be okay
Dragging on, feet of clay
Never knowing he's astray
Keeps on going anyway...

*chorus*

Seems to me now
That the dreams we had before
Are all dead, nothing more
Than confetti on the floor
It's the end of a decade
In another ten years time
Who can say what we'll find
What lies waiting down the line
In the end of eighty-nine...

*chorus*