So, the year is almost over, which means it’s all top-ten lists all the time. Lost in Transcription is no different. Do we really need a top-ten ABBA song list, you ask? I mean, aren’t they dead – and Swedish?

Do we need an electric spin-the-bottle game? A motorized ice-cream cone? A combination fork and pizza cutter?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Let’s get started.

9. Hey, Hey Helen
     Half feminist anthem, half catty anti-feminist anthem. She’s a single mother, making it on her own, but her children are becoming irrevocably twisted by the absence of a male role model, and will probably wind up being serial killers. Was it worth it? Well, was it?

8. Love Isn’t Easy (But it Sure is Hard Enough)
     Um, what?

7. Kisses of Fire
     Kisses of fire, burnin’ burnin’
     I’m at the point of no returnin’

6. When I Kissed the Teacher
     Companion song to Don’t Stand So Close to Me by the Police. That teacher is SO fired!

5. Bang-a-Boomerang
    Bang a boom a boomerang 
    Dum de dum dum de dum de dum dum
    Bang a boom a boomerang
    Love is a tune you hum de hum hum

4. King Kong Song
     A song about a guy writing a song about watching a King Kong movie. It’s just like Inception. My mind is, like, totally blown.

3. I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
     Awesome in part because this is actually the title, with five “I”s, five “Do”s and four commas, and in part because this was the song that my wife and I went back down the aisle to at our wedding.

2. So Long
     In which the narrator repeatedly asserts that she is NOT a prostitute.

1. Waterloo
     Extended “love is war: metaphor. You see, she is defeated utterly and completely by his romantic advances, just like Napoleon was defeated utterly and completely at Waterloo. Then, just like Napoleon, she contracts syphilis and dies alone on an island in the middle of the ocean.

Where are Chiquitita and Dancing Queen, you ask? Yeah, well, where are your mom and the – um – guy – um – who’s not your dad?