Yesterday was the bicentenary of the battle of Waterloo and there have been many remembrance services and reenactments over the past few days. While I don’t want to trivialise the serious nature of these services, the reports of this bicentenary did make me think about another well-known Waterloo, so that’s the song I’ve chosen to play today.

Described as the quintessential Eurovision song by musicologist Dr Harry Witchel from the University of Bristol, Waterloo was ABBA’s winning 1974 Eurovision entry. The song tells the story of a girl who is about to surrender to love, just as Napoleon did at Waterloo. ABBA’s performance at Eurovision was completely novel: audiences were not used to flashy costumes and choreography, and until the early 70s all countries had to sing in one of their national languages. Waterloo broke the mould in many ways, a mould which has continued to be broken ever since! Given the more poignant nature of yesterday’s bicentenary I’ve decided to make my version of Waterloo a bit different from the original. I hope you enjoy it.

If you’re looking for more ABBA tunes, click here. To hear all of my June songs, click here. If it’s your first time on the site, find out more about why I’m trying to record a piano tune every day here.

https://soundcloud.com/mark-pentleton/waterloo