ABBA stars praise for Pierce Brosnan's 'beautiful' singing in Mamma Mia

Irish actor Pierce Brosnan was widely berated by the critics for his singing in the Mamma Mia! movies but he has received high praise from Swedish stars ABBA…and they should know, or are they just being polite?

Brosnan reprised his role as Sam in the second movie and performed a half-sung, half spoken snippet of the classic S.O.S.

Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus spoke to RTÉ Entertainment about which actors they think have the best voices and it appears they are impressed with the former 007 star.

Benny said: “He has a good voice, I like this voice.

Björn added: “He didn’t sing much in the first movie either. But he sang the same song. It’s pretty clever.

“Just a snippet of S.O.S. and I think that little scene is beautiful. It conveys the pain he’s going through.”

However, Brosnan wasn’t their favourite singer in the movie. Unsurprisingly they were more drawn towards actors who also have plenty of experience as professional singers.

Benny said: “That’s difficult. You can’t say. The most special voice belongs to Cher, doesn’t it? Meryl sings beautifully, Amanda Seyfried sings beautifully and Lily James, I don’t know if you knew she can sing but she can really, really sing.

“They’re all good. Actually, they’re all good.”

The film is set in 1979 and tells the story of how Donna (played by Meryl Streep) has a series of whirlwind romances.
Benny and Björn say the reason their music works so well in the movies is that they have a song for every emotion that a character is feeling as the story moves along.

Björn said. “I hope so, I think so. Take a Chance on Me is very, very happy and Thank You For The Music is very happy too but there are moments like Knowing Me, Knowing You and The Day Before You Came . . . So we try to explore different styles and different relationships.”

Benny added: “The thing is, you sit and wait out for something to happen. Music that should come down from somewhere and speak to you and you can’t afford not to take it if it comes, it could be a happy thing, could be a sad thing, it could be anything but if it’s good enough it has to be kept there because it doesn’t happen very often.”

Written by Michael Kehoe @michaelcalling