Abba Biography

ABBA were a Swedish pop music group active from 1972 until 1982.

ABBA is the most successful act ever to come out of Scandinavia, and rank among the top acts in the history of popular music. The quartet topped worldwide charts from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. They remain a fixture of radio playlists and continue to sell albums. The group has sold "more than 350 million records, all but one being self-penned."

They were the first act from the European continent to enjoy consistent success in the charts of the anglophonic world (the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), and their enormous popularity subsequently opened the doors for many other European acts. They introduced Swedish music into the international mainstream, and have done much to establish pure pop as an equal among more "hip" music genres.

In 1984, Ulvaeus and Andersson released a music concept album Chess that they created together with lyricist Tim Rice. It was later turned into a musical on West End (1986), on Broadway (1988) and in Stockholm (Chess På Svenska - Chess in Swedish) (2003).

They followed Chess with Kristina från Duvemåla (1995), directed for the stage by Lars Rudolfsson and based on the Emigrants tetralogy by Swedish novelist Vilhelm Moberg. An English version of Kristina från Duvemåla has been in the works for a long time, and it had been reported that the Broadway pre-production is in its earliest stage. Mamma Mia!, a musical built around ABBA's songs and produced by Ulvaeus, is a worldwide box-office blockbuster with versions in several languages currently being played in many countries, including UK (West End premiere in 1999), USA (Broadway premiere in 2001) and Sweden (Swedish language premiere in 2005).

After receiving little attention during the acme of punk and New Wave in the mid and late 1980s, ABBA experienced a major resurgence. They were recognised as masters of their art, the three minute (or so) pop song. 1992 saw a revival of interest in ABBA, with the release of their ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits compilation album selling massively worldwide and setting chart longevity records. In the US, the album became the most popular ABBA release there selling to date more than six million copies.

Although the group were not active anymore, they continued to collect awards. In 1992, they received an Honorary Grammis Award, in 1993 ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits brought them a World Music Award as the Best Selling Scandinavian Artist of the Year, and in 2000 they won the Rockbjörnen Swedish Artist of the Century Award. The DVD version of the TV special ABBA in Concert was nominated for Grammis in 2005, and ABBA: The Movie won Grammis as the Best Music DVD in 2006.

In 2002, ABBA were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, and next year they were nominated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but failed to get inducted.

Ulvaeus and Andersson were recognised in 2001 with a Special International Ivor Novello Award. They also received the Music Export Prize from the Swedish Government and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Swedish Music Publishers Association (SMFF). In 2002, Andersson has been given an honorary professorship by the Swedish Government for his "ability to create high-class music reaching people around the world".

During the 1990s many ABBA tracks were rediscovered and covered by other artists, such as Erasure, Ash and the A*Teens, among others. The avant-garde band Blancmange had also covered The Day Before You Came in the mid-1980s, one of the first bands to cover an ABBA track. Internationally released, critically and commercially successful 1994 Australian film "Muriel's Wedding" directed by P.J. Hogan, featured an ABBA-loving protagonist.

On April 6, 2004 three former ABBA members (Ulvaeus, Andersson and Lyngstad) showed up together in London for the 30th anniversary of their Eurovision Song Contest win in 1974, appearing on stage after the fifth anniversary performance of Mamma Mia!. While on stage, they were presented an award from Universal Music and Polar Music for achieving record sales of 360 million sales wordwide between 1974 and 2004.

In a November 2004 interview with the German magazine Bunte Ulvaeus said a reunion would not satisfy ABBA's many fans, even though there are legions of them around the world often clamouring for one. In February 2005, at the Stockholm premiere of Mamma Mia!, for the first time since 1986 all four members of ABBA simultaneously appeared at the same public event.

On October 22, 2005, during the celebration show for the 50th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest, Congratulations (Eurovision), held in Copenhagen, Denmark, Waterloo was voted the best Eurovision song in the history of the contest. Despite pre-show rumours to the contrary, no band member was present to accept the accolade.

ABBA's success subsequently opened the doors for many other European acts. Their lasting legacy is the legitimisation of the Swedish music industry as a mainstream player (Sweden is considered by many as the third greatest exporter of music, following the US and the UK).

ABBA was inducted into Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002.[2]