I loved ABBA when I was growing up, but the other kids made fun of me for liking them. My best friend was especially critical. (He liked Styx and would go on and on about why Styx was better than ABBA. However, he did admit to liking "Dancing Queen.")
By the time I was a teenager, I got interested in other music and was embarrassed to admit that I liked ABBA, so I put their albums away. (They were pretty much worn out to the point of being unlistenable, anyway.) Then ABBA Gold came out and a surprising number of people admitted to liking ABBA (some secretly). I actually don't have ABBA Gold; I bought the 4 CD "Thank You for the Music" box set instead.
I find now that I really enjoy some of the songs that I used to skip over as a kid because I thought they were boring, such as "Like an Angel Passing Through My Room," "The Day Before You Came," and "Slipping Through My Fingers." Now I think they are intelligent, subtle, and sophisticated. Other songs took on new meaning from an adult point of view, like "When I Kissed the Teacher," which is both funny and sexy to envision.
Every now and then I come across an unexpected cover of an ABBA song, like when I was in my punk phase in college and I was listening to a new album I bought by Lush. I was shocked when halfway through the album this song started to play:
YouTube - LUSH - Hey Hey Helen
I couldn't believe it. I like the cover, but the original is best.
YouTube - Abba Hey Hey Helen "ABBA" (1975)