Great Pop Songs #1: 'Waterloo', Abba (1974)

So, here's the first in a new series.

Setting the context of a song in one of the most decisive battles in the history of the world, using a jazz structure based on a song by Wizzard, and entering it in the Eurovision Song contest, is hardly what you'd call the most obvious background for one of the most fundamentally excellent pop songs of the last century.

But then 'Waterloo' isn't any old pop song, it is probably one of the best songs ever written.

Before 'Waterloo', ABBA were just a cheesy boy/girl group singing songs about how they love someone, or how amazing roses are, or something like that. Then Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus had a brainstorm and came up with the story of a girl giving in to her beau, all counterpointed against the victory of Wellington and Blucher against modern history's greatest general.

The piano drives the song like a car down the speeding down the motorway, there are more hooks than in a fishing tackle shop and the general feeling of euphoria is all pervading.

It is impossible not to like this record. Is it is the benchmark against which all pop songs since 1974 should be judged against, and will be for ever more.

Oh, and as a postscript, Napoleon didn't surrender at Waterloo, but at Rochefort, a few days later.