The Biography Channel - ABBA Biography

After ABBA triumphed at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, their brand of pop stormed the charts. The dancing queens split in 1983 and have so far resisted a billion-dollar offer to reform.

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ABBA

Other European pop groups, keen to share in the limelight, quickly copied ABBA’s sound, as well as their two-boy/two-girl format. These groups include Brotherhood of Man and Bucks Fizz, who both won the Eurovision Song Contest, in 1976 and 1981 respectively, perhaps validating this formula.

“The Album” (1977) was released to coincide with “ABBA: The Movie” (1977), a feature film made of their Australian tour. Hits from this album were “Take a Chance on Me”, “The Name of the Game”, and “Thank You for the Music”.

By 1978 ABBA could only be referred to as a megagroup. Their trendy label, Polar Music Studio, converted an old cinema in Stockholm into their new state-of-the-art premises. Other well-known bands, such as Led Zeppelin, for their recording of “In Through the Out Door”, used the studio.

ABBA was moving into the arena of disco, which had exploded in 1977, with the Bee Gees “Saturday Night Fever”. ABBA released the single “Summer Night City” (1978) and after that, the album “Voulez-Vous” (1979), both with a distinctly disco sound. The reaction to this album from the UK and Europe was not as strongly favourable as that of the US. However, singles from the album: “Does Your Mother Know”, “Chiquitita”, “Voulez-Vous”, and “I Have a Dream” all found their way onto the charts.

In January 1979, the group performed at the Music for UNICEF Concert, donating all royalties for the song to the children’s charity, in perpetuity. Their best-known disco hit “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” was featured as a brand new track on the “Greatest Hits Vol. 2” (1979) album. Also that year, ABBA toured the US and Canada, playing to massive audiences.

Moving into the 1980s, ABBA’s style shifted to more personal lyrics and more pronounced synthesisers. Releasing the single “The Winner Takes it All” in January 1980, sufficiently piqued public interest in the upcoming album, for “Super Trouper” (1980) to set the record for the most pre-orders ever received for a UK album. The single was allegedly about Agnetha and Bjorn’s marriage, which was going through a rough patch at that time. Another hit single from this album was “Lay Your Love on Me”.

ABBA released their final studio album “The Visitors” (1981). Whilst this album showed a newfound depth and maturity, it was the start of their commercial decline. The group’s last hit single “One of Us” was a global hit in December 1981.

The group was starting to show signs of personal distress, with both the marriages by now, ended in divorce. They came together in the summer of 1982 to record a new album, but settled instead for a double compilation album of past hits, with two new songs thrown in. “The Singles: The First Ten Years” (1982) contained the new tracks “Under Attack” and “The Day Before You Came”, which was the last song ABBA ever recorded together.