50 years ago ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton - little did
they know it would be the start of incredible career.
When the swedish pop-band was founded in the early 70's, they consisted of
two lovers at the time: Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha
Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus. They had been making music solo since the
mid-1960s before finally joining forces in the early 1970s. While the men
composed and produced the songs as well as singing, the women mainly
acted as lead singers.
In 1972, they released their first single together, "People need Love", which
was a sales success in Sweden, so they immediately followed it up with their
debut album "Ring Ring" in March 1973. This also sold well and the group
became better known outside Scandinavia.
They wrote "Björn, Benny & Agnetha, Anni-Frid" on the album cover as their
band name. It was not only their current manager Stig Anderson who thought
that this was too long and - in contrast to the catchy sound of the pop group -
rather unwieldy and not very appealing. He suggested limiting themselves to
the first letters of the first names - and the result was "ABBA".
ABBA's international breakthrough came on April 6, 1974. After failing with their
nomination the previous year, they won the Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson
(now known as the Eurovision Song Contest, or ESC for short) in Brighton,
England, on their first attempt in 1974. The song with which they competed:
"Waterloo".
They performed the later mega-hit in front of almost 500 million viewers and
quickly became famous worldwide.
Their appearance was just as striking as the song. They performed in brightly
colored costumes, based on the glam rock popular at the time, and originally
shaped electric guitars and thrilled the audience with their originality.
It was precisely these outfits and electric guitars that would later become their
trademark.
ABBA's "Waterloo" was also an enormous success on record and cassette and
sold millions of copies worldwide. In the United States it reached the Top 10 and
became worldwide popular. At the 50th ESC in 2005, the song was voted
the best song in the history of the competition.
Further success was not long in coming. In the 70s, ABBA followed this up with
several hits, with "Voulez-Vous", "Dancing Queen", "Thank You for the Music",
"Super Trouper", "The Winner Takes It All" and "Take a Chance on Me" selling
millions of copies and enabling the band to achieve several high chart positions.
"Dancing Queen" in particular became a hit of the century, reaching number 1 in
the global charts and staying in the top 100 for 22 weeks. The song is still one
of the best-selling songs to this day and also holds its own in the modern world,
as evidenced by over 1.2 billion streams on Spotify. ABBA is still the biggest
Swedish band of all time and one of the biggest bands in the world.
However, a long crisis began in the early 1980s. The two couples split up, and
their eighth album "The Visitors" (1981) was to be their last for four decades. But
even that didn't stop the band, as their music remained popular throughout the
decades.
In 1999, the ABBA musical "Mamma Mia!" became a worldwide success, as did the
2008 film adaptation.
In 2021, ABBA surprised the world and finally released the commercially successful comeback album "Voyage". However, according to the band members - who are
now in their mid to late 70s - this will also be their last. This marks the end of the
career of one of the greatest bands in music history, but their influence and success
will live on and be felt for generations to come.
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