ABBA - Pop's Pride and Prejudice

Kitsch, mawkish, saccharine, hopelessly out of fashion, uncommitted, clumsy and badly dressed. These are just some of the many criticisms often levelled at ABBA and their music. Judgments that are generally more than fair and hard to refute, yet they crash headlong into the Swedish quartet's flawless vocal interplay, the painstaking craftsmanship of their arrangements, and their undeniable mastery of crafting perfect melodies - easy to remember yet intricately composed (a lesson learned as much from Bacharach as from the Beatles). The yin and yang of pop, in short, sublimated into one of the supreme expressions of music for the masses, a veritable production line, during their decade of activity, of memorable and melancholy choruses rivalled in number only by those of the Bee Gees and Elton John. Destined to rank among the twenty best-selling artists of all time, the four of them would kickstart the tradition that would turn chilly Sweden into the world's third pop-music power. Not just thanks to less effective successors like the more rock-leaning Roxette or the dance-floor-friendly Ace Of Base, but above all thanks to the dozens of producers and songwriters who, to this day, still literally hold the reins of American mainstream music.

Conquering Europe

It's 1971 when Björn Ulvaeus and his wife, blonde Agnetha Fältskog, form the group together with Benny Andersson and his girlfriend, Norwegian Anni-Frid Lyngstad, conceiving it, however, only as a temporary project, since all four were busy with their respective solo careers. The proto-ABBA thus begin recording a few songs in Swedish under the wing of their loyal manager Stig Anderson (future co-author of several tracks), immediately hitting the sales charts back home. These songs, however, are credited only to Björn & Benny (who had already been collaborating for some time), and it's only from 1972 onward, with the release of their first English-language single, the four-part-harmony marching tune brimming with good sentiment "People Need Love", that the two women's names also start appearing on the group's record sleeves.

The project attempts a large-scale launch in early 1973 with the release of their debut album Ring Ring, credited to Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida, a record that showcases the skill and potential of the two songwriters (and singers, especially on the early albums) and the two vocalists (Agnetha the more technically gifted, Frida the more natural stage animal), but which, while pleasant enough, still betrays a lack of clearly defined identity and often sounds raw and naive.

The "not-yet-ABBA" heard across the grooves of their first LP are, in fact, a group - one among many - infatuated with the American dream and with the sunniest, most romantic pop-rock that had defined the previous decade across the Atlantic. The record runs through tributes to the Turtles (the successful "She's My Kind Of Girl"), the Carpenters (the delicate "Another Town, Another Train" and "I'm Just A Girl"), the San Francisco scene ("Rock 'n' Roll Band", "I Saw It In The Mirror") and the more Southern-rock tradition ("Me And Bobby And Bobby's Brother" and above all the driving "He Is Your Brother", which stands out above everything else). Even Fältskog tries her hand at songwriting, for the first and only time with the group, with "Disillusion", a pompous ballad that proclaims her love for both Barbra Streisand and George Harrison.

Traces of what ABBA would become in the years to come can be found in only a handful of songs, a messy, limping "Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough)" and the sugary emptiness (starting with the title) of "Nina, Pretty Ballerina". Only one track seems to have the potential to truly leave a mark and turn them into something more than a project born for fun - into that chart-devouring machine that would dominate the entire decade of the Seventies. The title track is, in fact, catchy and silly in just the right measure to win over a fairly wide audience.

The four want to use "Ring Ring" to represent Sweden at the 1973 Eurovision Song Contest, but they fail to get past third place in the national selection. No matter - within a few weeks the song draws interest even beyond Scandinavia's borders and drives the album to quite respectable sales across central Europe. This unexpected success leads the four to decide to keep working together on a permanent basis and to change their name to the simpler, more effective acronym ABBA (standing for Agnetha, Björn, Benny, Anni-Frid). As a result, the desire also grows to conquer the two most important markets, the UK and the US (Ring Ring would only be released in the UK and the US, and finally under the ABBA name, in the Nineties).

First battle won

The four decide, then, to play the Eurovision card again, this time knowing they have an extremely powerful arrow in their quiver, one that would be hard to turn down: the song that would thrust them forcefully onto the world pop stage. The irresistible "Waterloo", a blaring glam-rock romp, this time clears the national selections and triumphantly wins the 1974 contest, immediately grabbing viewers' attention thanks to its unusual metaphor (Napoleon's surrender to the British likened to surrendering to a budding love) and its wildly catchy melody sung by Agnetha and Frida. And this time ABBA manage to make their mark beyond the borders of Scandinavia and Central Europe too, reaching number one in Britain and, even more surprisingly for a Swedish group, number six in the United States. The self-titled album that follows shortly after the single's release will, however, disappoint expectations - no other track on it seems to measure up, especially in terms of media impact.

Although Waterloo immediately shows a more personal style maturing compared to the debut, the overall mood is calmer and less fun than the single would have suggested. With the exception of the acid rock of "Watch Out" (the "hardest" track - relatively speaking - ever made by Ulvaeus and Andersson) and the unruly Elton-John-style rockabilly of "King Kong Song", the rest of the tracklist is in fact given over to overly syrupy ballads ("Gonna Sing You My Lovesong") that would still rather dream of the warm beaches of Malibu than the misty Swedish fjords, such as "Hasta Mañana" and "Honey Honey" (which tries in vain to repeat the trick of the Archies' "Sugar, Sugar", which had conquered world charts five years earlier). Two bland little singles that performed only decently on international charts without ever truly making the desired impact, and which did little to extend the album's shelf life.

It then falls to the nostalgic, three-part ballroom slow dance "Dance (While The Music Still Goes On)" and the acoustic, Byrds-style closer "Suzy-Hang-Around" (which remains their only song sung mainly by Andersson) to keep the listening experience afloat on a record that too often veers into unfocused, unremarkable territory, such as the bland calypso of "Sitting On A Palmtree", the disco-funk-in-embryo of "My Mama Said" and the silly theatrics of "What About Livingstone".

SOS

The impression that the Swedish quartet's boom might be a flash in the pan is not long in surfacing. At the end of the year, as a first taste of the new album in the works, the single "So Long" is released, and although it manages to repeat the infectious boogie drive of "Waterloo", it's practically ignored by the media. The situation changes only slightly a few months later with the second single, even though the sound takes a completely different direction: the nostalgic, old-fashioned "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" is, in fact, a successful recreation of 1950s American big-band orchestras, though not quite able to climb to the top of the charts (with the exception of Australia's, where from that point on they would reign supreme).

And yet ABBA still have several arrows left in their quiver, because the third, self-titled album, also released in the spring of 1975, proves far more solid than the first two and, above all, rich in memorable songs that would turn them into superstars. The two following singles above all: the full-bodied, choral ballad "SOS" and the devastating honky-tonk nursery rhyme "Mamma Mia", with its almost hard-rock riffs, which would send them back to the top of the British charts. ABBA indeed remains their most rock 'n' roll work in spirit, thanks also to the nervy guitar work of "Hey, Hey Helen", the hoarse, bluesy swagger of the carefree "Rock Me" (with Ulvaeus stealing the show), and Andersson's kitsch outburst on the glam-prog instrumental "Intermezzo No. 1". It's also their stylistically most varied record, running through the syrupy, acoustic "I've Been Waiting For You", a mild reggae tribute ("Tropical Loveland"), an equally unusual R&B experiment, "Man In The Middle", built on a fine clavinet riff paying homage to Stevie Wonder, and finally elevates the silliness of the marching tune "Bang-A-Bomerang" to pop perfection.

To ride the wave of their last two singles, ABBA decide to immediately (and prematurely) release a collection of highlights from their three albums, Greatest Hits, along with a new single: the English-language version of a song Ulvaeus and Andersson had written for a recent Swedish-language solo album by Frida. "Fernando", destined to become one of their most beloved songs, is an acoustic, melancholy ballad that, amid dreamy flutes and rolling drums, tells of the nostalgic reunion of two former soldiers years after the Mexican Revolution; over the years, critics would have no shortage of things to say about "Fernando"'s supposed melodic perfection. Despite its unusual subject matter, both the single and the compilation shoot to number one on the UK charts and around the world.

Reaching the destination

By now ABBA are the band of the moment, on everyone's lips, with no room for missteps - and they won't make any. Recorded in late 1976, Arrival will crown them as the most popular and beloved pop band since the Beatles, and will go down as their most celebrated and accomplished album. Though not too far removed from the previous ABBA, the new record is immediately more cohesive, less ragged, and built more firmly around a polished, never-sloppy pop-rock sound that makes plain just how quickly Ulvaeus and Andersson had matured as producers, along with the vocal chemistry between Agnetha and Frida, which here borders on perfection.

Not everything is flawless, of course: the dose of saccharine in "My Love, My Life" is once again excessive, and it's impossible not to feel a twinge of embarrassment at being won over by the silly but irresistible carousel swirl of "Dum Dum Diddle". Still, Arrival - named after the synth-tinged, Celtic-flavored instrumental that Mike Oldfield would revisit four years later on his album "QE2" - is above all a collection of textbook pop gems: the nostalgic "When I Kissed The Teacher", the explosive "Tiger" and a thoroughly delightful "Why Did It Have To Be Me", where Ulvaeus hams it up over a loping blues beat with the girls chiming in gleefully on backing vocals (curiously, the same melody would resurface, with a Caribbean-style arrangement, on the b-side "Happy Hawaii").

All this frames a handful of landmark singles, like the seductive cabaret swing of "Money, Money, Money" and, above all, the chart-topping "Knowing Me, Knowing You", perhaps their finest song of this early career phase: a fierce, bitter love ballad whose dazzlingly intricate chorus climbs vertiginously before dissolving into a glam guitar solo. It's on these two tracks that Norwegian Frida, until now somewhat overshadowed by Fältskog's vocal exuberance, finally seems to take the upper hand over the other three members. Rounding out an album clearly made in a state of grace are also the first tentative flirtations with the emerging disco sound, heard in the shimmering "That's Me" and, of course, in the lead single "Dancing Queen", their single most famous song. Sinuous, danceable, flirtatious, and endlessly catchy, "Dancing Queen" will dominate the international charts, hitting number one on both sides of the Atlantic and propelling the album to even greater success than anticipated.

The coronation

After a triumphant tour across Europe and Australia (where they're greeted by ecstatic, enormous crowds) whose live performances would later form the backbone of the curious, pointless star-vehicle film "ABBA: The Movie", a new record quickly follows: simply titled ABBA: The Album, it serves in part as the soundtrack to the near-eponymous film. Rather than deepen their flirtation with disco - and likely drawn in by the critical acclaim and sales success of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" - Ulvaeus and Andersson decide once again to shift their musical coordinates, venturing into more mature, muscular rock territory. The collective hysteria surrounding their name, and the confidence that they could easily repeat the triumph of the previous album, afford them the freedom to take a few risks, such as releasing the subdued "The Name Of The Game" as the lead single. It's a risky choice: despite Agnetha and Frida's heartfelt performances and the fine craftsmanship of the arrangements - complete with Beatles-esque horns in the lovely chorus - the song immediately feels less explosive and too melodically elaborate to replicate the boom of "Dancing Queen". And yet, against all odds, success smiles on them once again, even more emphatically, with the following single - another of their most beloved songs - the irresistible, driving march of "Take A Chance On Me": an instantly memorable melody and dazzling vocal interplay, this time with a yodel-like twist, immediately hitting number one again in the UK and number three in the US (where overall sales would even surpass those of "Dancing Queen").

These two massive singles send The Album's reputation soaring, even though its tracklist doesn't contain, as expected, another equally danceable, fun track. The opening is in fact lush and airy, entrusted to the lovely, psychedelic-tinged "Eagle", and the mood turns rather reflective in the record's central stretch, with the AOR power-ballad "One Man, One Woman" and the more acoustic, almost oratorio-like "Move On". Things pick back up with the driving, by their standards quite propulsive, gallop of "Hole In The Soul", indebted to Supertramp but unfortunately lacking the vocal aggression it could have used.

Up to this point, it's a rigorous and accomplished album, if less sparkling and slightly duller than its two predecessors - but Ulvaeus and Andersson can't help themselves, and, having begun nurturing their dream of writing a musical, they unwisely decide to close the album with a three-part mini-suite titled "The Girl With The Golden Hair: Three Scenes From A Mini-Musical". The extremely catchy "Thank You For The Music", a future live staple for the band, is the apotheosis of bad taste and saccharine, musicarello-style sentimentality, impossible to forgive despite Agnetha's bigger-than-life performance. The following "I Wonder (Departure)" is almost a muted, dull counterpart to it, but then, fortunately, comes a last-minute save in the shape of the frantic "I'm A Marionette", a meeting point between the Central European drama of Brecht and Weill and the orchestral grandeur of Andrew Powell of Alan Parsons Project.

Despite the huge and ongoing support of their many fans, ABBA seem to quickly grow tired of The Album, deciding not to tour in support of it and even releasing the third single, "Eagle", only in a handful of minor markets. Yet the hysteria surrounding their name shows no sign of fading - if anything, it's further fueled by the buzz around the much-anticipated wedding of Andersson and Lyngstad.

Saturday night's kingdom

There is, however, a growing determination to figure out the new stylistic direction for the follow-up to such a blockbuster, and there seems to be little choice in the matter: 1978 is, without question, the year dominated by the Bee Gees' Saturday-night fever, the very zenith of disco music. During a brief promotional trip to the States, in the company of the Gibb brothers themselves and Olivia Newton-John, ABBA decide to give in to the allure of disco (hadn't they, after all, gotten the whole world dancing with "Dancing Queen" a couple of years earlier?) and, back in Sweden, record "Summer Night City", perfectly in step with the sounds in vogue at the time, sexy and danceable. Although the track is formally flawless and ranks among their best in this style, the single surprisingly fails to get the response expected from the public, and so what was meant to become the new album's flagship track is quickly shelved.

Recording on the new album, however, has already begun at their newly opened Polar Music Studios in Stockholm (which would soon also host Led Zeppelin and Genesis for the recording of "In Through The Out Door" and "Duke"), and it's too late for any further stylistic second thoughts. Two more singles, this time more in line with their earlier output, are released in the first months of '79 to pave the way for the album, and this time the result is exactly what was hoped for. The sugary "Chiquitita" is an attempt - not even that far from fully succeeding - at writing a new "Fernando", this time tailored to Agnetha's bright, ringing voice, complete with a charming, lounge-pianist-style outro. "Does Your Mother Know", on the other hand, is an irresistible, highly danceable stomp-rock number in which Ulvaeus clumsily tries to resist the advances of an all-too-young admirer.

When Voulez-Vous finally sees the light of day, in late spring, it's immediately clear what the album's main ingredients are: unmistakably disco beats, synthetic strings, syncopated basslines, funky little guitar licks, and even the occasional Eastern-flavored synth line (as in the sultry title track). This new sound forms the backbone of tracks that are, on one hand, successful and engaging, like the elegant "The King Has Lost His Crown" and the sparkling "If It Wasn't For The Nights", and on the other, more slapdash, like "Lovers (Live A Little Longer)", or outright crowd-pleasing ("As Good As New" and "Kisses Of Fire").

What Voulez-Vous offers is a sonic toolkit that, while pleasant and solid, ultimately ends up sounding overly mannered once set alongside Benny and Björn's melancholy melodicism and the girls' vocal delicacy. As ABBA definitively transform into a disco band - as many mistakenly label their entire career - they risk coming across as downright impersonal (the B-side "Lovelight" is a close cousin of the Bee Gees' contemporaneous "Tragedy"). The single "Angeleyes" is certainly the clearest example of the strengths and weaknesses of an album nonetheless destined to enjoy an extremely long life on the European charts thanks to its countless hit singles. It's no surprise, then, that by year's end one of the album's biggest successes would turn out to be the most classic, saccharine ballad of the bunch, the almost Christmas-like "I Have A Dream" (complete with a closing children's choir), with Frida once again cast in the role of the captivating seductress.

In the second half of 1979, ABBA embarked once again on a sold-out tour, this time taking in Europe, North America and, after a fairly long break to record a new album, Japan. At the same time their second official compilation, Greatest Hits Vol.2, was released, led by the brand-new track "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)", probably their most successful and best-remembered disco hit, which would make headlines again a full twenty-six years later when Madonna, with Andersson and Ulvaeus's blessing, sampled its distinctive synth line to build the backbone of "Hung Up", one of her best-selling singles. Agnetha Fältskog is perfectly at ease here in the role of disco diva, but, curiously, she would soon don an entirely different guise when she handed the band one of its most memorable moments. In December, the spotlight fell on an unexpected twist: she and Björn filed for divorce.

The Winner Takes No Prisoners

An event that for any other band would probably have spelled the end was instead turned by ABBA to their media advantage: not only did they decide to carry on as if nothing had happened, showing an icy determination to keep work strictly separate from their private lives, but they actually put the latter to work in service of their record sales. It's summer 1980 when "The Winner Takes It All" is released: a sweeping ballad in which Agnetha, in a heartbroken, resigned tone, pours out the disappointments, jealousies and shattered memories left behind by the end of a relationship. Ulvaeus denies it's an autobiographical song, but the media opportunity is too tempting not to promote the single this way, and so, thanks to a mix of voyeuristic prurience and genuine appreciation for the song's undeniable beauty, the public gives the track an enormous reception, topping the charts in Britain and reaching the top ten in the United States (for the last time). Anticipation for the new album becomes feverish, with millions of copies sold on pre-order alone, but when Super Trouper finally arrives at the end of the year, fans find a record that isn't quite as bitter and depressed throughout as its lead single suggested.

The run of hit singles continues, in fact, on a lighter note thanks to the famous title track (their last UK number one), a brisk mazurka that nonetheless betrays the weariness of life on the road under the spotlight, a sugar-coated martial quality also found in the folk-tinged "The Piper". Despite the rollicking electronic rock 'n' roll of "On And On And On", which openly pays tribute - albeit in a far more robotic form - to the vocal harmonies of the Beach Boys's "Do It Again", one of Andersson's favourite bands (Mike Love would return the favour by covering the song on his only solo album, "Looking Back With Love"), Super Trouper remains an album dominated more often than not by slower tempos.

Only the bittersweet "Our Last Summer", which seems tailor-made for Frida's maternal delivery, manages not to pale next to the lead single; elsewhere, the waltzing "Andante, Andante" drags along far too dated, "Happy New Year" gets lost in assorted mawkishness, while "The Way Old Friends Do", recorded live and almost a Celtic traditional, closes the album on an overly pompous note. Little trace remains, then, of the recent disco binge, save for the nimble "Me And I", featuring vocoder-filtered voices and an effervescent chorus that, surprisingly, was never chosen as a single. Instead, and rather shrewdly, they opted for the stately but less soaring "Lay All Your Love On Me", probably because it already leaned toward the dance scene of the coming decade rather than the one just gone by.

Varied, colourful, impeccably produced (with their first forays into synth-pop territory) and destined to become their best-selling studio album, Super Trouper can be considered ABBA's stylistic summa, the record that brings them back to the carefree pop of their early days, albeit approached with greater maturity while never giving up their trademark kitschy sheen.

An Army in Pieces

Andersson and Ulvaeus, however, are tireless and torrentially productive: rather than resting on the laurels of yet another chart triumph, they get straight back to work on a new album, even as personal relations among the four continue to crumble. By the time they return to Polar Music Studios in early 1981, Benny and Frida too will have put an end to their marriage. This time the far-from-idyllic, far-from-relaxed atmosphere spills over into the music itself, though incredibly not into its quality. Released exactly a year after Super Trouper, The Visitors stands as the odd piece in their catalogue, the most serious and mature one, less concerned with entertaining the listener than with surprising them with sophisticated, modern sounds (it would also be the very first album ever released on compact disc), elaborate melodies and far weightier lyrics than usual. The effect is immediate, to the point that it barely sounds like classic ABBA at all, starting with the opening "The Visitors (Crackin' Up)", which deals with Soviet dissidents hunted by the KGB (a theme that would get the album banned in the Soviet Union of the time). The track finds an unrecognisable Frida abandoning her soft, reassuring register to tackle a muezzin-like chant, her voice icy and cutting, over a jagged, crepuscular synthetic bed, before launching into a claustrophobic, towering techno-pop charge. Metallic new-wave nervousness also surfaces in "Soldiers", eased by a more buoyant "Super Trouper"-style chorus but still centred on Cold War tensions, and in "Should I Laugh Or Cry", which was pulled from the tracklist at the last moment and used as a B-side.

Andersson and Ulvaeus then try their hand again, this time with good results, at musical theatre: the melodramatic "I Let The Music Speak" is a sumptuous, shape-shifting kitsch pastiche blending Broadway and operetta, synths and prog, while the suave cabaret number about a ménage à trois, "Two For The Price Of One", wouldn't sound out of place today among the chamber-pop classics of Divine Comedy.

Loneliness and abandonment are the guiding themes of an album whose striking cover alone shows the four members standing apart from one another. The Visitors is also the only one of their records with no tracks sung entirely in unison; instead, the songs are approached as if each band member were a soloist. One of these, the sweet lullaby "Like An Angel Passing Through My Room", which closes the album bare and marked out only by metronome and music box, is the only ABBA song performed entirely by a single member. And it's for Norwegian-born Frida in particular that the record seems to serve almost as a launchpad to break free from the group and pick her solo career back up, this time with more international ambitions. Her recent divorce from Benny Andersson is examined in the power ballad "When All Is Said And Done", just as "The Winner Takes It All" had captured Agnetha and Björn's split a year earlier, albeit in a tone more defiant and less resigned than one might expect. And while the more conventional, and frankly over-sweet, slow number "Slipping Through My Fingers" finds Agnetha reflecting wistfully on her children growing up, the pulsing "One Of Us", a melancholy ballad with a Neapolitan aftertaste, seems almost to console her bandmate over the failure of her marriage.

"One Of Us" would be the only hit drawn from the album and their last single to reach the UK top ten (three weeks at number three). The follow-up, "Head Over Heels" - the relatively most joyful track on the album, a kind of synth-tango with a lavish chorus - is instead an unexpected flop (it won't even crack the top 20), and The Visitors too, after the usual strong chart debut, proves less enduring than their previous albums. Having all but saturated the record market for the best part of a decade, the public seems to be growing weary of ABBA: not everyone is convinced or won over by their stylistic shift, and younger generations still have their feel-good, almost homely image too firmly fixed in mind to credibly welcome them among the new heroes of new wave.

The Surrender

Although The Visitors is, to all intents and purposes, ABBA's swan song and is now unanimously regarded as their farewell album, it was in fact never conceived as such. After a long break, during which both Frida and Agnetha worked on their first English-language solo albums, ABBA returned to the studio in late spring 1982, intending to lay the groundwork for their ninth album and even entertaining the idea of a new tour. However, the chemistry between the four and their desire to work together had by then clearly evaporated for good: recording dragged on in fits and starts (hampered by their solo commitments), and by the end of summer Ulvaeus and Andersson, unhappy with the results, threw in the towel. Of the six tracks completed, two were shelved and wouldn't see the light of day until ten years later: "I Am The City", one of their typically carefree songs but recast in fully electro-pop form, and a more conventional 80s sax-driven ballad titled "Just Like That". Of the remaining four, "Cassandra" (an epic halfway point between the classic "Fernando" and "Chiquitita") and the silly nursery-rhyme "You Owe Me One" were promoted to B-sides paired with the two singles chosen to promote a new compilation, the double The Singles: The First Ten Years, due out before Christmas.

The seductive "The Day Before You Came" (to date the last track the four ever recorded) was, somewhat riskily, chosen as the lead single: the melancholy song has no chorus at all, just one long verse painstakingly narrating the dull, grey daily routine of a woman in the days leading up to the arrival of a new partner (or her killer?). "I had no feeling, no suspicion / That my life was about to change" ⟦Q1⟧, sings Agnetha, disconsolate, over an evocative, hypnotic bed of cold drum machines, with Frida delivering dramatic operatic backing vocals in the background. The single, now a cult favourite, is without a doubt the best thing in their catalogue, but despite a fine video finally free of silly skits and costumes, it was once again a major flop (curiously, a cover of the song by Blancmange would fare better a couple of years later). The same fate awaited the second single, again electronics-driven but more conventional, "Under Attack".

Unlike the singles, the compilation nonetheless achieved yet another strong chart placing, and the four appeared on a handful of television shows to promote it, but from that point on, with no official announcement of a split, ABBA quietly went into permanent standby, and only a live album would be released in the mid-80s, to general indifference.

Officially missing in action

It will be, not entirely unexpectedly, the no-longer-brunette Frida who first appears on the market as a solo artist, and in fine form, while ABBA are still officially active. Produced by Phil Collins and featuring songs by Bryan Ferry, Giorgio Moroder and Collins himself, her first English-language album, "Something's Going On" from 1982, makes its mark mainly thanks to the huge success of the almost-title single "I Know There's Something Going On", as much in line with ABBA's last, darker records as with the early solo work of the former Genesis man. However, after that initial hit, no other single pulled from the album manages to repeat the feat. Things go worse two years later with "Shine"; despite production by Steve Lillywhite and a song written by Ulvaeus and Andersson, both the album and the title single receive such a lukewarm reception that Lyngstad ends up neglecting her recording career for years to come (with the exception of a Swedish-language album in 1996 and a few singles released only in Scandinavian countries). Having married a prince of the German principality of Reuss in the early 90s, she gives up the title of popstar to take on the noble title of Princess Reuss of Plauen.

Even less eye-catching, at least initially, is the English-language solo career of Agnetha Fältskog (who had nonetheless kept recording in Swedish throughout the 70s as well). The 1983 album "Wrap Your Arms Around Me" only manages to launch two minor singles: the lovely, Caribbean-flavoured "The Heat Is On" and a "Can't Shake Loose", written by the same author as Frida's "I Know There's Something Going On" but nowhere near as striking. Her other two albums released in the 80s pass by even more unnoticed.

It's only at the dawn of the new millennium that Agnetha takes the reins of her career back with real foresight, embracing 50s-style torch songs and romantic ballads for more adult tastes, first with "My Colouring Book" (2004) and then with "A" (2013), both acclaimed across Northern Europe and the UK.

Ulvaeus and Andersson, as expected, instead try their hand at writing (together with Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber's celebrated lyricist) a musical set during a chess tournament against the backdrop of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. "Chess" and its accompanying 1984 album enjoy decent success, despite initial criticism. The show is restaged for years with mixed fortunes, and it yields no fewer than two memorable singles: the famous "One Night In Bangkok", sung by Murray Head, and the Elaine Paige/Barbara Dickson duet "I Know Him So Well", destined to become a standard for every golden-voiced diva (it will later be covered by both Whitney Houston and Barbra Streisand). The pair carry on working together, producing and writing two albums for the little-known pop duo Gemini, and then try their hand at musical theatre again, but this time only for Swedish stages. Between minor productions and orchestral concerts, however, their main job becomes keeping the ABBA brand alive, which is surprisingly destined to reach an even greater and more enduring fame a decade after the group's split.

The restoration

At the start of the 90s, all four members of ABBA are almost completely forgotten and by now seen as tied to a past that feels too distant and nowhere near cool enough to compete with the sexually aggressive, untouchable British and American popstars of the day. Their semi-retirement from the scene, however, proves to be anything but a surrender, because while the public — even the younger end of it — doesn't seem ready to cheer on Frida and Agnetha alongside Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson, it is more than ready to rediscover the songs they once sang. At the end of '92, all ABBA compilations are pulled from the market to make way for a new retrospective titled Gold: Greatest Hits, containing their nineteen most famous singles; the response is excellent, and for many it's inexplicable, almost absurd, to see ABBA back at the top of the charts at a time when grunge is busy sweeping away so many younger 80s idols.

The following year a second compilation also comes out, More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits, containing their lesser-known (but no less lovely) singles, which unfortunately again chooses to skip over the more rock-leaning sounds of their early days in favour of their shinier moments. The impact on the popular imagination is so great that even a group past its peak like Erasure, led by Vince Clarke, manage to breathe new life into their career by releasing "ABBA-esque", an EP containing four covers of the Swedes. The triumph of Gold is no flash in the pan: the record, with close to thirty million copies sold, goes on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time, destined to be continually reissued and to climb back into the upper reaches of charts worldwide every time ABBA's name forcefully returned to the media spotlight in the years that followed.

The opportunities for that would be many, and often tied to the world of cinema. In 1994, two box-office hits, "Muriel's Wedding" and "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (both Australian), reference the four Swedes not only on their soundtracks, further boosting their fame. That fame is set to become legend when, in 1999, the musical "Mamma Mia!" debuts in London, written by Catherine Johnson under the supervision of Andersson and Ulvaeus (initially not entirely convinced by the pièce) and also produced by Lyngstad, weaving ABBA's classics into a brand-new story. Translated into more than ten languages and staged continuously all over the world, it becomes one of the most successful musicals ever made, its celebration culminating in the film adaptation of the same title in 2008. The love story set on a Greek island has nothing to do with the group's aesthetic or with the schlager and glam-pop atmospheres of their music, and yet nobody seems to mind — if anything, the public response is so huge that in 2016 an equally successful sequel is made. One of the film's stars, evergreen popstar Cher, seizes the opportunity to make an entire album of their covers, titled Dancing Queen. Further proof of how ABBA's songs are now perceived by the public as independent of their original performers, having definitively become part of popular tradition: certainly flattering for their authors, and a further source of outrage for their detractors, who are just as numerous as their admirers.

In the pop scene, from Madonna to Lady Gaga, taking in Kylie Minogue, and from George Michael to Robbie Williams, via Pet Shop Boys, ABBA's influence has always been tangible and fundamental, and perhaps only now, with the mainstream rhyming mostly with R&B, does it start to feel less essential. And yet there are countless, unexpected musicians from all kinds of backgrounds who have, over the years, surprised everyone by naming the Swedes as their guilty pleasure, if not outright their favourite band: John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Lemmy, Elvis Costello, Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, and even a famously prickly figure like Noel Gallagher... have all, at various times, expressed genuine admiration for them. Mike Oldfield, Sisters Of Mercy, Portishead, Sinéad O'Connor, Joe Jackson and John Grant have even covered their songs, and Bono invited Andersson and Ulvaeus to duet with U2 on "Dancing Queen" during a Swedish stop of the "Zoo TV" tour.

By now there's no keeping count of the museums, exhibitions, documentaries and tribute bands dedicated to them, nor especially of the multi-million-dollar fees they've been offered for a reunion, even just for a single evening. An offer the four of them have always turned down, so as not to tarnish, with the visible marks of time passed, their place in the collective memory. It will probably only be thanks to new virtual-reality technologies that it becomes possible to see them together again, in the form of holograms, all on stage at once, given how exceedingly rare it is for the four of them to appear together at all.

The reunion

Sooner or later, though, it had to happen: after nearly forty years of ever more persistent rumours of a reunion, the four of them give in to temptation, and in 2021 release a new album of original material with the stated aim of taking listeners back in time, somewhere between the late 70s and the early 80s. Despite its futuristic artwork, however, the record doesn't deliver any unpredictable adventures, nor does it uncover any new musical life forms. Voyage is, in fact, a time machine that would like to erase forty years of history and musical evolution, offering the illusion that the Swedish quartet never split up and, indeed, that they're still as young and as camp as we're used to seeing them in their deliciously kitsch music videos.

To back up the fantasy of this eternal spring, the Swedes' reunion comes with the creation of the long-anticipated digital avatars (immediately nicknamed ABBAtars, ugh!), whose job it is to perform live in place of the flesh-and-blood members, who are by now unable to withstand the demands of the stage over so many scheduled dates, inside a purpose-built London arena. In other words: maximum expense, minimum effort. Surely the four of them, and behind them the lavish administrative machine they've built up over the years, are hoping that, at the end of it all, the profits will turn out to be maximum too. In effect, what we're looking at is a shameless nostalgia operation playing it safe, catering to the millions of fans who, all these years, despite the solo projects, have continued to think of them as frozen in time, thanks to celebratory films, documentaries and compilations.

It's no surprise, then, that Voyage resembles in intent that Super Trouper, which even back then sounded like a summation of their various sides, making for a listen that's more reflective than danceable, dripping with self-celebratory syrup. While "When You Dance With Me" and "Bumblebee" recapture the folk-leaning attitude of their early days, to a tender, even pleasant effect, the lush ballad "I Still Have Faith In You" and the airy "Ode To Freedom" dust off the full pomp of their gaudiest moments. Clearly, age and experience haven't translated into greater restraint or minimalism, as confirmed by the sugar-rush choruses of the frighteningly Christmassy "Little Things".

So, are ABBA still capable of having fun? They answer without hesitation with the sprightly "No Doubt About It", somewhere between stomp-disco and Italian-style musicarello, and the even flashier "Don't Shut Me Down", which aims to be a new "Dancing Queen" but whose melodic line comes dangerously close to that of "Felicità" (yes, that one, about a glass of wine and a sandwich). The problem is that they themselves don't seem to be having that much fun, and above all that Agnetha Fältskog, in her solo parts, often sounds lacking in verve, as if singing with the handbrake on, wishing she were somewhere else. Take a listen to "Keep An Eye On Dan" in this regard, the only track here to pick back up the synth-pop leanings of The Visitors, and which closes with a brief, ironically fitting quote of "S.O.S."

An album that wants to sound like the young ABBA but that exudes anything but youth, joy and carefree spirit, in short. The overall result would border on the caricatural if it weren't for the fact that the now blonde herself Frida often manages to save the day with her warm, reassuring performances, and the irresistible boogie of "Just A Notion" wins over listeners unreservedly, probably because it's a reworking of a '78 demo tape featuring the original vocals from back then (and the difference in attitude is glaring!).

Picturing them grappling with trap beats or EDM sirens would have been equally jarring, but a more contemporary, elegant middle ground, one better suited to all four members' current abilities, would surely have served them better than creating this spatio-temporal distortion, which paradoxically makes them sound even more dated than on their old albums and makes that gem "The Day Before You Came" seem light years ahead. If ABBA had kept making music together over the past 40 years, the release of Voyage today would probably have made headlines for the wrong reasons rather than winning them over, but history went differently, so better not to fantasize: let's come back down to earth and let them enjoy this latest, meticulously engineered moment of glory.

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