Song Analysis - What About Livingstone

 I like this song a lot.  To me, it's kind of like a social commentary, accurately pointing out people's resistance to change, trying new things.  Anything new is bad, no purpose, just a waste of time, whereas anything that happened back in the day is fine and innovative.

The song starts out with our main character(s) as sang by Agnetha and Frida going over to buy the morning paper or whatever.  The newspaper.  And while they are there, they hear some other patrons enjoying the newspaper laughing and sort of mocking some of the ventures happening at the time, specifically about traveling to space, walking on the moon.  The patrons are like, "What is this good for anyway?"  

But then our main character is like "now wait a minute.  I have a question for you then.  What about Livingstone?"  Specifically they're referencing the British explorer David Livingstone, who made important discoveries during his exploration of Africa, specifically the Nile River.   You can read more about it on Wikipedia.  (That's what I did lol.)  

How is it that the actions of David Livingstone and his explorations in Africa are seen as good, worthwhile, and important, while humans trying to explore beyond the bounds of planet Earth is not?  I feel like this is an issue that still comes up today.  The more conservative way of thinking (I'm not discussing politics, just the way of thinking) is to not allow things to grow and change, life is good as it is, and the good old days are always better because, and anyone who counters that way of thinking and tries to introduce something new is made fun of and mocked, until years later when these things are finally recognized as good and the cycle continues.  Idk if that fully makes sense lol, but basically what I'm trying to say is, I think ABBA accurately documented how a lot of people's way of thinking is, and managed to discuss it in a way that makes it a little easier to understand, not delving into more of a broader topic but keeping it to the realm of David Livingstone and Spacemen.  

A lot of ABBA fans question this existence of this song.  It's not your typical ABBA song, with happy tunes, sad lyrics, or about the Dancing Queen.  It's not like ABBA at all!  But here's the thing- ABBA have always had a huge variety of songs with a wide array of different themes and topics, so this song doesn't stand out to me as being different.  Plus it's got that early ABBA sound with the sped up vocals, Agnetha and Frida's joint vocals blending together to sound like one voice, and Bjorn and Benny joining in on the chorus.  I'd like to someday try to lower the pitch of the vocals to make them sound a little less "chipmunk-y" haha, but overall the song is really good and I love the meaning of it.