Equally confident I knew that. 
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I enjoy all of Marks solo work a lot. He has something to say in virtually all the tracks & I don’t hear too many ‘fillers’. Many outstanding/delightful melodies.
The only surprise to me is that the only one I considered outstanding after the first listen is Tracker. However all the rest grew on me after two or three listens. I suppose that this was because I always associate Mark with DS & virtually none of his material sounds much like them to my ear.
I would probably agree with you about the picks of the bunch. I consider his solo material to be a fine body of work.
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Re Supertramp, back in the early 70s I regarded them as OK but nothing making me want to buy their music. I saw them in ~1974, as a support band unexpectedly promoted to headline due to illness of the main band (Black Widow). Then 10 or 12 years ago after converting to streaming I did a bit of filling in of my collection and did buy a couple of their albums.
As for Abba, out and out pop and not my thing at all - but having said that they certainly could create catchy songs and tunes - some with quite meaningful lyrics. I took no notice of them until one day a few years ago my wife called to me from where she was watching TV, saying I had to come and see - James Bond trying to sing! It was of course the film Mama Mia, and I laughed so much I stayed to watch the rest of it. And I found that in the context of the movie, and its subsequent prequel, I enjoyed the music as well as the films. But I agree, attemping to compare Abba with Supertramp, or with Dire Straits (or indeed Dire Straits with Supertramp) is like comparing chalk with butter.
Meanwhile back to DS, and I found with the discussion here I dodn’t recall Industrial disease at all -so had a quick look as I had picked Love pver gold as favourite in lieu of Best of because of sone of the songs - but while it is one of the albums I do have, I see I don’t have ID, the album tracks showing one missing, so I presume I found it unpleasant/irritating and never wanted to play it again.
Sorry just didn’t want to offend anyone (well new that is)
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I’ve always had a copy of Crime of the Century in some format or another. The two in between that and Breakfast were sleepers. They didn’t have the same impact and took time to develop, they’re now my most played albums (of theirs).
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Are we comparing or just amenably drifting in the manner of a great conversation.
As regards Abba I think it’s easy to appreciate some of what they did at a pure pop level from stuff like “Gold” but the real way in is to hear cover versions of their songs. The diversity of them really explains why people have them right up there. And no, Erasure are not in this list.
Portishead - SOS
Sinead O’Connor - Chiquitita
The Czars - Angel Eyes
Madonna - Like An Angel Passing Through My Room
Luka Bloom - Dancing Queen
Elvis Costello - SOS
Any Trouble - The Winner Takes It All
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You hipster it’ll go down well with your Morris Minor and cord jacket with leather patches. 
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Guilty as charged!
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indeed!
However, Erasure played an important part in reactivating interest in ABBA through their ABBA-esque EP and subsequent videos. A few months later ABBA Gold was released and has sold something like 30 million. The momentum was kept up by the Mama Mia stage show and then the movies - they have never been more popular.
It’s also easy to dismiss their music as pop (great pop as it is) but their later albums from Voulez Vous to The Visitors reveal a superb level of songwriting and arrangements. I don’t think I have heard anyone speaking about the backing vocal arrangements in particular which are very clever and detailed.
For someone (moi!) who was brought up in the 70’s on Bowie, Status Quo, Deep Purple and 10 cc, it’s as big a shock to me that I find ABBA so utterly brilliant.
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I’m surprised there isn’t more mentions of Alchemy on this thread. It’s my favourite DS album by a mile. Great versions of Sultans of Swing and Tunnel of Love. It’s their only album that I still play regularly. The tracks have way more drive and energy than the studio versions.
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Comparison is the thief of joy.
I’m not sure there’s any value in comparing Dire Straits to The Cure given that they ultimately do very different things for very different people.
I’m always intrigued when fans of one band always divert criticism they hear about their favoured musicians, onto someone else. Where is the value in that? You like it or you don’t. Musical appreciation is, in its very essence, subjective.
I love The Cure, but I’ve listened to very little Dire Straits. I think Telegraph Road is a brilliant example of what it sets out to be. I adore the guitar tone in the title track on Brothers in Arms.
What I’m less keen on, is tribalism and the way the internet has enabled it beyond anything I could have imagined in my youth.
Just enjoy the music or, if it’s not your thing, go play something you love.
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To be fair, I have always loathed Dire Straits, right from the moment I heard them on Charlie Gillett’s Radio London show back in the 1970s. Knopfler’s voice, his sweatbands, his guitar style, his general demeanour, the feeble rhythm section, the cold-eyed emphasis on technique and sound quality, Illseley’s hair, the complete lack of swing (see what I did there), the godawful “tunes” and even worse lyrics, the terrible artwork… I could go on (and on and on and on and on and on, rather like ‘Telegraph Road’ or ‘Private Investigations’). Plus, ‘Walk Of Life’ is the third most irritating song ever.
I went to a show of theirs in (I think) 1982 and it was one of the dullest events I have ever witnessed – and I’ve seen Snow Patrol!
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Ooh, I can’t let that go 
.
The Abba Gold compilation had been planned for some time before the Erasure EP but was delayed by some rights issues. The timing was also allied to the fact that, far from a critical reappraisal, Abba had simply been adopted by the gay community between 88 and 92 as very danceable and very camp and their record company was fully aware that an opportunity existed to exploit that long before Erasure came along.
Erasure planned to put a full album out but got wind that the Abba compilation was on the way, realised there was only one winner there and scaled down to an EP. There was no connection between the record companies and artists but it’s fair to say that Abba’s record company were encouraging of Erasure’s EP as the usual reissue of a single or issuing of a new track wasn’t going to work with Gold.
The Erasure EP absolutely contributed to the success of Gold but certainly not any kind of critical reappraisal at all. The opposite if anything. Sales of the original albums were in the tens of thousands before Gold and they broadly stayed there afterwards. No-one cared about the great lost songs, the craft etc. What Erasure, Gold and Mamma Mia did was reduce the band to the pure pop phenomenon which created the conditions for Voyager. Even now those original albums don’t sell especially great.
Evidence that a portion of people took Abba very seriously was there back in the 70s if you look and it’s that which, for example, led to the many 1980s covers rather than any reappraisal. In the 1980s it was very much accepted that we had been in the presence of some classic, timeless writing. Erasure et al largely killed that. Abba nowadays are a commercial phenomena reduced to a few tired tropes. Some of it was appalling but the genius of the best of it is all but dismissed in the rush to the dance floor or singalong.
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I suspect the comment you’re commenting on is an outlier here. Most of us here, I suspect, like some Cure, some Supertramp, some Dire Straits and some Abba. You do tend to find tribalism on social media/forums and, interestingly, amongst journalists still keen to see this as opposed to that because it makes it easier to explain and write about but, out in the world, music listening is probably the least tribal it’s ever been. My offspring could not conceive of the Beatles v The Stones, Blur v Oasis, prog v punk etc.
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Let’s not forget either the role that “Muriel’s wedding” and “Priscilla, queen of the desert” played in reviving interest in Abba in the 90’s. Both films were globally successful, and both feature plenty of Abba songs.
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Much as I love Priscilla, I think it simply cemented the camp simplistic perspective on their music whereas Muriel brought a real melancholy to the fore and highlighted stuff that has largely gone missing from discussions about them since.
Indeed, sadly this kind of thing seems to be mainly propagated by those who outfit to know better
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Agree with you Kev.
They can’t hold a candle to a top rock band like, as a prime example, the……..Eagles…..
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Quelle surprise Mike!!
An excellent and interesting response though. Interestingly, there were quite a few “Best ofs” released in different territories before ABBA Gold was issued, none of which sold significantly well and did have an element of filler. Not sure why Gold was so massive but maybe a combination of perhaps “all killer, no filler” and the timing helped - any thoughts?
And there’s the pity of it all, hopefully in the future, that will be rectified.
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And see also Alexei Sayle’s succinct critique…
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