Nothing says Christmas like a good old cry.
I originally heard this song with my Mother when I was 8. We were watching Mamma Mia and mother and daughter, Donna and Sophie were preparing for Sophie’s wedding watching with Donna painting Sophie’s toenails, me not understanding why my mother wold weep during this part but joining in with eh anyway, perceiving it through the film whilst my mother watched it in reality.
Covering it back in 2021 over an instagram live Declan McKenna has finally realised his rendition of Abbas greatest sad song, listening to it feels like a poignant punishment, as you imagine everything that could have been if it was different compared to how it is and finding happiness in that.
With new album ‘What Happened To The Beach?’ set to be released on February 9th, perhaps Declan is easing us into his new era.Still faithful to the original McKenna’s take on ‘Slipping through my fingers’, appears softer, more raw, like an observer to a departure rather than the one being departed from. His acoustic guitar reverberating through the track demonstrates how natural this final wave is yet how disputing it can feel. There is no reassuring chorus like that seen in the film or in the original by ABBA, there is just a feeling of mournful melencholy as we try to find peace with the inevitability of adulthood and unfair farewells. We learn to forgive each other for our failures and forget all the ‘adventures we planned’ but didn’t do in the face of new forged paths that this farewell makes way for.
Listening to it now, 9 years later, with a different narrator,I still think of my mum, I think of us dancing to Abba’s hits together, hairbrushes and pepper mills as make shift microphones.Our living room the Pyramid Stage as we performed ABBA’s greatest hits, steering away from ‘Slipping through my fingers’ to avoid sobbing. I sob as I watch those memories,160 miles away from her. But it is also the younger versions of myself I weep for, the realisation that time does pass and often too quickly, your early 20s split into separate lifetimes, high school feels like eons ago and although you graduated uni less than a year ago, you were surely a child then and now you have a car, a house a promotion.
It’s all happened too fast and you find yourself slipping through your own fingers along with everyone else that once held you close. Small pixels forming friends faces replace Saturday afternoons spent doing whatever teenagers do, your parents guidance cut short to a 5 minute phone call about the weather and the gas bill, these people who were once your whole world now a stranger to you, and you sob helplessly knowing there is nothing you can do.
An ode to parenthood, to growing up and saying goodbye Declan delivers ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ beautifully.
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