ABBA

Stockholm

ABBA formed in Stockholm in 1972 from four people who already had careers. Björn Ulvaeus had fronted the Hootenanny Singers, Benny Andersson had played keyboards in the Hep Stars, and in June 1966 the two began writing songs together. Stig Anderson, who managed the Hootenanny Singers and owned the Polar Music label, encouraged them. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad had each built solo careers in Sweden, and Fältskog and Ulvaeus married in 1971. The four sang on one another's records, and a first single credited to all of them, People Need Love, came out in June 1972.

In 1973 they entered Ring Ring in the Swedish Eurovision heats and finished third, and a debut album of that name followed. Engineer Michael B. Tretow layered the sound in the manner of Phil Spector's wall of sound, and it stuck to the group. Anderson began calling them ABBA in 1973, after their first initials, and the group asked the Swedish fish canner of the same name for permission. In 1974 they won the Swedish heat and then the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton on 6 April with Waterloo, the title song of their second album, Waterloo. It was their first UK number one. Ulvaeus later said that the singles released straight after Waterloo tried to sound more like the Sweet, a semi-glam rock group, which was a mistake because they were always a pop group.

Arrival

In 1975 SOS brought them back to the UK charts and Mamma Mia reached number one there. The compilation Greatest Hits, released in March 1976, became their first UK number-one album. Arrival followed on 11 October 1976 with the mirrored-B logo on its cover. It gave them Dancing Queen, their only number one in the United States, along with Money, Money, Money and Knowing Me, Knowing You. Arrival was the top-selling album of 1977 in both the UK and West Germany.

That January they opened their first major tour in Oslo. The two Royal Albert Hall concerts in London drew more than 3.5 million postal ticket applications, and eleven dates in Australia in March were filmed for ABBA: The Movie, directed by Lasse Hallström. ABBA: The Album arrived in December 1977 with the film, and gave them two UK number ones, Take a Chance on Me and The Name of the Game.

Divorces and Super Trouper

In 1978 they converted a vacant cinema in Stockholm into Polar Music Studio. In January 1979 Ulvaeus and Fältskog announced their divorce, and the group said they would carry on. Voulez-Vous came out that April, and a tour of North America and Europe followed. In March 1980 they played eleven concerts in Japan, the last tour of their career. The Winner Takes It All, released that July, was their eighth UK number one, and Super Trouper followed in November, spending nine weeks at the top of the UK chart.

The Visitors and after

Andersson and Lyngstad announced their own divorce in February 1981, and recording of The Visitors began a month later. The album came out on 30 November 1981 with a cover that showed the four members apart. One of Us was the lead single and reached number three in the UK, and the title song, The Visitors, was about dissidents in the Soviet Union. Sessions in 1982 struggled, and the group released The Singles: The First Ten Years at Christmas. Their last performance of the original run was on the BBC's The Late, Late Breakfast Show, by live link from Stockholm, on 11 December 1982. They never officially announced a split.

Andersson and Ulvaeus went on to the musical Chess with Tim Rice, while Fältskog and Lyngstad pursued solo careers. The group's music returned in 1992, when Erasure released the Abba-esque EP and the compilation ABBA Gold appeared. The stage musical Mamma Mia! opened in 1999. In 2021 the four released Voyage, their first new album in 40 years, and in May 2022 the ABBA Voyage concert residency opened in London with the members as digital avatars. Writing about Arrival in Pitchfork, Simon Goddard said that at their best ABBA were as mysterious as Bowie and as unbearably sad as the Smiths.