My favorite ABBA song is "Fernando."
When I was 12? 13? there was this really dumb teen soap opera called Young Americans on the WB tv network about rich kids attending a boarding school. It was cancelled after eight episodes.
One of the characters, played by Katherine Moenig, was a girl who disguised herself as a boy and registered for school as "Jake" instead of Jacqueline as an act of rebellion to see if her neglectful rich mom would notice.
She, the rebel who rides a motorcycle, becomes bff's with the school dean's straight-laced son (played by Ian Somerhalder), and then falls for him, and he falls for her, and he has a giant sexuality crisis about it because he doesn't know she's not actually a guy when he realizes he's in love with her, and then they're secretly dating for a while because of course she has to keep pretending to be a guy or she'll get expelled probably for illegally falsifying records, and all their friends kind of know they're a couple but have no idea about the gender shenanigans.
In the final episode all her school friends have to go on an emergency roadtrip to find some person for I can't remember what reason, including one who only just found out she's not actually a boy minutes before the emergency roadtrip started, and her boyfriend, who is still not really finished having a sexuality crisis about them, and they are all crammed together this car awkward as fuck.
And then "Fernando" comes on the radio and she's like "This is my jam!" and starts loudly singing along, and then everyone is like eh, what the hell, and starts singing loudly along with her and the tension is broken.
As a queer kid just hitting puberty in the late 90s, this show was the closest thing to a queer teen coming out narrative+romance with a happy ending I had ever seen on television, or anywhere.
And whenever someone mentions ABBA, I think of that scene first.
That's why "Fernando" is my favorite ABBA song.
