ABBA - Super Trouper

What this video is

Released November 1980, 'Super Trouper' arrived at a pivotal cultural inflection point: the global disco backlash had crested, and ABBA consciously retrenched to a cleaner, more introspective pop-rock sound. The video's theatrical staging — circus performers, a sea of stage spotlights, immaculate white costuming — literalizes the song's central metaphor of the Super Trouper spotlight as a symbol of performed…

Why it matters

A canonical example of the Scandinavian theatrical pop promo, this video helped define the pre-MTV European promotional film as an art form. Its spotlight-as-metaphor visual language and circus-inflected spectacle directly anticipate the theatrical maximalism of early 1980s pop video production.…

The director

Lars Sven 'Lasse' Hallström (born 2 June 1946, Stockholm, Sweden) is a Swedish film director who first gained recognition directing nearly all of ABBA's promotional clips from 1974 to 1982, beginning with 'Waterloo'. He also directed ABBA: The Movie (1977).…