One of the most-awaited reunions in the history of pop culture, ABBA 2.0 is surely a musical force to reckon with. A household name that evokes fond teenage memories for many – those in the millennial or Gen Z bracket may have grown up listening to their hit numbers or at least seen their parents vibing to it. The Swedish quartet from Stockholm had become a pop band in 1972. After tasting success at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, the group comprising Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (Frida) went on to become one of the G.O.A.T. in the annals of music. The band fell apart in 1982 after the marriages of the two couples in the group collapsed. However, that did not dim the massive popularity of the band as ABBA Gold, a collection of their most-loved songs released 10 years after their separation, became a bestseller and the only record to spend 19 years and two weeks in the UK’s top 100. It is currently at number 17 in the UK charts. You might now have a fair idea of why ‘Voyage’ their latest album which dropped on November 5 after a 47-year long hiatus, has the world going crazy. A 2022 fully virtual concert in London is also on the cards, which will see their digital avatars or ‘Abbatars’, created with motion capture technology, performing.
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How did ABBA take shape?
Benny and Bjorn had already worked together on a few projects and the idea of a band started to form in 1969 after meeting Agnetha and Frida. ‘Festfolk’, meaning ‘party people’, was a cabaret act by the foursome. The name was a wordplay on the Swedish slang for engaged couples – fästfolk. Although it failed to take off, they recorded ‘People Need Love’ as Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid, which was moderately successful. The group came third in the Swedish selection for Eurovision contest with the single ‘Ring, Ring’ in 1973. The band entered the contest in the following year, too, this time with ‘Waterloo.’ By that time, they had held a competition in a Gothenburg newspaper to find the perfect band name, and finally settled on ABBA, an acronym formed from the first letters of their names, coined by the team manager Stig Anderson. A canned fish company in Sweden also shared the same name but agreed to lend it to the pop band. ABBA proceeded to win over the jury with ‘Waterloo’ and got Sweden its first Eurovision prize. The rest, as you know, is history.
The highs and lows
ABBA was not always this popular. There was a time when the band was looked down upon as critics branded them as superficial and cliché with no political undertones in their songs. ABBA was unabashedly pop during a time when progressive rock was the ruling ethos of the time. The influence of the rising glam rock movement in the UK also trickled into their outrageous stage outfits which were a ploy to evade Swedish taxes. It, in fact, became a non-mutually exclusive component of ABBA as when you think of them, there’s no way you’re not reminded of the garish costumes, too. In their home country, especially, which had a largely egalitarian society, ABBA was seen as money-hungry and ‘schlager’ – a term of ridicule for the kind of popular music they made. “The problem with ABBA was not that they lacked skill or talent, but that they were commercial," writes music scholar Per F. Broman in The Journal of Popular Music Studies. Some laughed at the faulty structure of their English lyrics – Agnetha and Frida had trouble initially with the language. This didn’t bother fans at all, who catapulted ‘Waterloo’ to the top of US and European charts. In 2005, runaway hit was adjudged the best song to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Eurovision. ABBA also surprisingly found fans in Australia, who were taken up by the catchy tunes of ‘Mamma Mia.’ ABBA truly arrived with its fourth music album, Arrival, in 1976, with tracks like “Dancing Queen," and “Fernando."
Björn had married Agnetha in 1971, while Benny and Frida married in 1978. By the ‘80s, the marriages ran into trouble, which was reflected in the later songs, too. Both couples separated soon after, and a pall of gloom descended on their music with the lyrics carrying more depth than ever. ‘One Of Us’, ‘Happy New Year’, ‘Our Last Summer’ and ‘Like An Angel Passing Through My Room’, all had a distinct tinge of sadness. Their last two albums ‘Super Trouper’ and ‘The Visitors’ poignantly captured the emotional turbulence in their personal lives, a distant style from their usual peppy music.
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After the band disintegrated in 1982, many factors were at play, that kept its legacy alive. Björn, in 2011, admitted that ABBA were “uncool" in the ’80s. “But for some strange reason, we still remained popular on the gay scene." He has always attributed the band’s revival in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s to the gay crowd. ABBA is to many gay fans what the Rolling Stones are to straights — whose appeal transcends time, place and age, Barry Walters, a music critic, wrote in a Los Angeles Times article.
Tribute bands like Björn Again also sprang up and became immensely popular with sold-out shows. ABBA Gold released in 1992 was like a harbinger of its looming resurgence. Riding on the wave, the musical adaptation ‘Mamma Mia!’ debuted in 1999 and became one of the longest-running shows in US Broadway history. The 2008 film with the same name, starring Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried, was the top grosser in the UK for that year. Its sequel, ‘Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again’, released in 2018. ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ and ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ were also movie tributes.
What makes ABBA ABBA
Perhaps ABBA has stood its ground through the many revolutions that music has witnessed because it could always fix us a sweet escape from rude realities. With easy-to-understand lyrics and the added attraction of rhymed endings, ABBA music was the perfect antidote to a heavy-hearted day. One could plug into any of their songs and it just stuck with you. No matter how hard you try, you find yourself tapping feet and humming along with the chorus. Its non-ostentatious premises and the breezy musicality almost made it seem like we were floating home on a cloud.
Carl Magnus Palm, author of the definitive biography ‘Abba: Bright Lights, Dark Shadows’ says that the key is their understated Swedishness. “Specifically it’s the importance to their music of Swedish folk songs and of a sound called Schlager. It’s not cool music, but they added other things that they loved like The Beach Boys and The Beatles and millions could relate to it." The simple, chirpy, and rhyming style of Schlager music was hugely popular in Europe. Although Palm explains, there is a hint of melancholy to even the most joyful ABBA songs. The members had experienced poverty and familial struggles while growing up in post-war Sweden and its influence has surely crept into the deeper layers of song themes.
Yet another element that made ABBA music stand out was the production formula ‘Wall of Sound’ created by American record producer Phil Spector. The band sounded more polished and enormous thanks to a double-tracking system, that duplicated instrument sounds, developed by studio engineer Michael Tretow. Chris Patrick, author of ‘ABBA: Let The Music Speak’ said Frida and Agnetha’s voices were of a different league altogether. soprano, “When you listen to them in unison you can’t tell either of them. It’s just a one-voice sound."
If you’re still wondering whether there’s a science to the success, cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin, in a New York Times article, said that ABBA’s catchy melodies, simple lyrics, which encourages people to sing along, and chorus regularity, which satisfies our need for order, encourage dopamine – our brain’s “happy juice." While their sorrowful songs induce prolactin, the “comfort hormone."
Why ‘Voyage’ is historic
Having sold over 385 million albums, ABBA are the first band from a non-English-speaking country to be consistently successful in English-speaking nations. They even had eight back-to-back number one albums in the UK. The top-selling band from Sweden as well as continental Europe, their popularity even spilled over to Latin America. Even with so many records under their belt, they were adamant about not reuniting and reportedly turned down a $1 billion offer to tour.
Cut to 2016, they performed live for a private event and rumours started floating of a reunion. “We took a break in the spring of 1982 and now we’ve decided it’s time to end it. We simply call it Voyage and we’re truly sailing in uncharted waters," the band said in a statement. ‘Voyage’ is already on its way to smashing records by being the fastest-selling UK album in four years. It is expected to dislodge Ed Sheeran’s ‘=’ (equals) from the number one position, which, if it happens (on November 12), will make ‘Voyage’ their 10th chart-topping album. After the announcement of ‘Voyage’, a follow up to their swansong ‘The Visitors,’ and teasing the world with new releases ‘I Still Have Faith In You’ and ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’, ABBA made it clear that their magic was still crackling. 40 years got nothing on the band members’ candid camaraderie, the dominant element that made their songs stand out, the reunion proved. As the ‘Voyage’ sets sail into an era-defining moment, ABBA is probably the only band, which has wielded such immense influence across the world, to unite after almost half a decade and produce an LP as well as a futuristic concert – one for the ‘album’, indeed.
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