This article will not compare the songs “No Doubt About It” by ABBA and Hot Chocolate. I’ve tricked you into reading this, and I’m not sorry.

I went into this thinking it would be a perfect opportunity to discuss one of my favorite oddball 80s hits (#2 in the UK, beat by “Theme from M*A*S*H”) “No Doubt About It” by Hot Chocolate. If you don’t know Hot Chocolate by name you at least know “You Sexy Thing” which was in a 90s Burger King commercial for a chicken sandwich you were meant to have sex with.

They’re a great band that goes a lot deeper than their handful of hits from the 70s and 80s. A lot of their songs are danceable, smooth, with the slightest guitar edge, and they sang about love and sex and all the stuff people sing about.

Except “No Doubt About It.”

Let’s say you bring home the Hot Chocolate Greatest Hits LP and flip it over to find names like “Girl Crazy” or “Disco Queen” and you think you know what you’re getting into. “No Doubt About it” sounds good, I’m sure it’s about how having sex with this lady is fun, no doubt about it! Let’s give it a go.

Nah, it’s about aliens and how there’s no doubt about it: they exist, visit us, etc.

Whatever your take on aliens is, it’s at least a little funny for a band whose hits are 70% horny dance songs to write an absolute banger about how you need to believe me, aliens are real god damn it. If the song sucked it may never have even seen the light of day, but it’s really good. The electric piano and relaxed disco beat make the verses sound like walking the wet streets of a dark city alley. In this scenario, I’m wearing a black duster. Then the chorus hits and it triumphantly soars like a majestic UFO, which is definitely real. It’s a huge Gary Puckett-esque earworm, except about aliens instead of how he’s a sexual menace.

So I thought that was a fun enough thing to write about and then I’d include the ABBA song “No Doubt About It” as a courtesy for being “pretty good for a band of 70-year-olds.”

But now I’m here listening to ABBA’s “No Doubt About It” over and over thinking about how no one really gave a shit they made a comeback even though the record is pretty great.

The album and song came and went, which felt odd for such a monumental reunion. ABBA was one of those “never reuniting” bands like Talking Heads or The Smiths, but they did it! We were all very happy about it for a couple weeks, and then I didn’t hear tons of people talking about them. That’s mostly my fault, but it’s not not the fault of all music becoming content. Where a miraculous band reunion is treated to a brief pause on my Twitter scroll. A “cool!” And then maybe I listen to the record if I’m a bad enough dude to click off the app.

Gen-X/Millennial cusp gripes about how the present and future of media distribution sucks aside, ABBA put out a pretty good album! I probably won’t buy it on vinyl but I liked it! Will any of these new songs be radio hits? No. But let’s say we’re in an alternate universe where “Dancing Queen” didn’t come out in 1976 and was on Voyage in 2021. Would it be a hit today? There’s literally no way to prove it either way, so I’ll say no because it proves my point: we don’t care any more. We’re drained of the ability to give a shit about new ABBA in 2022. A sad state. We like old ABBA, oh yeah, big time. They made a sequel to Mama Mia! and it’s fun as hell. We just don’t want new stuff from old people.

So I’m just stuck thinking about that now. How musicians have a window of relevance. It’s not about what you have in you, it’s about what you’re able to get out of you in that window. For some it’s a couple years, for others a few decades, but at some point people just don’t care. 

Play the hits. “What if this new song is a hit?” No, sorry, fuck off, it is not a hit. 

Obviously this is not a new gripe. It’s a music cliché older (and yes, more annoying to point out) than yelling “Freebird!” at a show. The difference now is that I’d thought ABBA figured out the formula. They’re one of the few bands that could have tested this theory too: Be a beloved worldwide pop sensation for a decade, break up, say you’re never getting back together, make the fans crazy with anticipation, then say “OK, we’ll come back” 40 years later and the world explodes with gratitude.

Nope. They just come back and then we can maybe see them do a hologram show; a bizarre and uncanny tribute that is usually reserved for dead performers. ABBA was our last chance to maybe prove that you can grab the world’s attention on your own terms even if you’re disgusting and old.

This isn’t to say some bands haven’t pulled it off, Pixies came back, The Stooges came back. They did well and their comeback records weren’t even that great! I think the difference is that that happened over a decade ago and now things are bleaker. How much bleaker? Not sure, but probably a lot. Spotify is a bummer, it’s harder to get paid for your work and you basically have to cross your fingers and hope a popular TikToker uses your song in sponcon for a health powder that gives you diarrhea until you lose weight.

The point is ABBA’s “No Doubt About It” is a great song and maybe the most “classic ABBA sound” on Voyage. Hot Chocolate’s “No Doubt About It” is a fantastic weirdo song that could be in a light hearted movie about aliens. Treat yourself and give em both a spin, and take a moment to appreciate and share the art you love. Everyone’s a winner.

Oh also, there’s a country slow dance song titled “No Doubt About It” by Neal McCoy that I did not care for. Hot Chocolate and ABBA both beat that one. Sorry, Neal.

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