ABBA - Voulez-Vous

What this video is

Released in mid-1979, 'Voulez-Vous' arrived at a precise inflection point in popular music history: disco's commercial peak was colliding with a growing backlash, most visibly symbolized by Disco Demolition Night in Chicago (July 12, 1979) — the same month the single reached shops. ABBA's embrace of disco on the Voulez-Vous album represented a strategic internationalization of their sound, with the backing track…

Why it matters

A canonical example of the late-1970s European Eurodisco promo clip, 'Voulez-Vous' demonstrates how ABBA and Hallström were pioneers of the music video form years before MTV's 1981 launch. The video's performance-only format, theatrical lighting design, and deliberate slow editing pace (avg. shot…

The director

Lars Sven 'Lasse' Hallström (born 2 June 1946, Stockholm, Sweden) is a Swedish film director who began his career directing short pop music clips for Sveriges Television in the late 1960s. He became ABBA's exclusive promo clip director from 1974 through…