It’s 7:45pm on Thursday and I’m about to watch ABBA live at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. Actually not quite, the band hasn’t performed in the UK capital for over 40 years. Instead, I’ll be seeing holograms of the Swedish supergroup cleverly dubbed “ABBAtars” as part of ABBA Voyage, a show that sold hundreds of thousands of tickets before it debuted last May.
Almost exactly a year after the show premiered, ABBA Voyage still draws huge crowds of fans of all ages from all over the world – I had to buy tickets months in advance. It’s been so successful that recently there have been talks to take the ABBAs on tour. Modeled after their 1977 counterparts and featuring holograms of Swedish pop stars performing their greatest hits, the 90-minute show isn’t the only ABBA attraction to make waves. There are all kinds of ABBA-themed parties in the US (I swear, there’s at least one a month where I live in Washington DC). It begs the question: What makes this band’s music so popular four decades after their debut?
First, a brief introduction to our Swedish superstars: ABBA was founded in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (the group takes its name from the first letters of each member’s name). However, the group really “made it” when they sang their hit single “Waterloo” and won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. ABBA remained active for nearly 10 years, releasing eight studio albums, but eventually disbanded in December 1982.
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Abba won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in England with “Waterloo”.
Olle Lindeborg/AFP via Getty Images
To learn a little more about the band’s perception over time, I spoke with ABBA historian Carl Magnus Palm, who remembers being surrounded by their music growing up in Sweden. “It wasn’t like you could escape ABBA if you were in Sweden,” he told me. In the first leg of ABBA’s career in the 1970s, they received mixed reviews—one critic famously wrote, “We met the enemy and they are them.” As Palm explains, the attitude towards them back then was that they made good pop music, but it wasn’t taken as seriously as it would be today.
Palm began recording the band in 1992, when the “ABBA revival” began, with the release of their greatest hits compilation. ABBA Gold. When he first started writing a book about the group, people told him he had to get it out as soon as possible or it would be irrelevant. “But since the late ’90s, no one has said that anymore. They realize that ABBA is here to stay.”
When asked why he thought ABBA’s music had managed to get around and stay current, Palm had a few ideas. First, the production value sounds surprisingly modern. “It’s not that far from today’s music,” he says. He also points out that listeners have a strong affinity for melodies you can hum along, and ABBA’s music is definitely from “Dancing Queen” to “Gimme! give me! give me! (A Man After Midnight).”
“Music is upbeat, it makes me happy, it’s easy to dance,” 23-year-old ABBA fan Charlie Smith repeated to me. “You can accompany him in the car. You can play at a wedding and everyone will know about it. It’s a connecting point for people.”
Nate Sloan, professor of musicology at the University of Southern California, offered a deeper analysis. He highlighted the unique juxtaposition of ABBA’s two lead singers (Anni-Frid and Agnetha) as a key component of their sound. “When two vocalists are singing the same note, having different vocals really adds a great color and gives each their own interpretation,” he says.
Sloan also cited the band’s uniquely immersive “maximalist pop” sound. “There’s a lot going on in ABBA songs,” she explains. “Very orchestral. ‘Mamma Mia’ is a great example of this. You hear a marimba at the very beginning of the song, but then you have the synthesizers. It’s a mix of orchestral, symphonic, and then the very new tradition of electronic synthesis.”
An integral part of ABBA’s longevity is the global appeal of their discography. Palm and Sloan attribute this to a number of factors, including the group’s efforts to translate their music into Spanish, and both highlight how international the music is in itself, with influences from the US, UK and Europe.
“This music isn’t really tied to a particular time or place,” Sloan says. “It doesn’t sound traditional Swedish. It doesn’t sound like the pop music of the 1970s or ’80s. It has elements of disco, soul, classic and bubblegum pop, but it’s a unique blend of all of them. In this sense, there is a little something for everyone.
Beyond music, there are many reasons ABBA has remained in the public consciousness; Mama Mia! Featuring numerous songs composed by ABBA and members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the jukebox musical first opened in the West End in 1999. A star-studded, delightfully crazy movie adaptation was released in 2008, followed by a hit sequel in 2018.
Mama Mia! A key factor influencing the band’s relevance is the way many young fans, myself included, are introduced to ABBA’s music these days.
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ABBA’s Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Bjorn Ulvaeus attended the first performance of ABBA “Voyage” in London.
Dave J Hogan/Getty
“She got divorced from ABBA because the songs were placed in a new context and mean something else when you’re in it. Mama Mia! this was performed by other singers,” says Palm. “But it’s one of the many things that goes on constantly to keep ABBA’s music and the ABBA phenomenon on the agenda.”
TikTok also breathed new life into the band’s legacy. Whether it’s a “Chiquitita” riff, a “Angel Eyes” lip sync, or a band recreating a band’s iconic “Lay All Your Love On Me” performance. Mama Mia!, ABBA songs are all over the video sharing app. Most of the time, the content is ABBA or Mama Mia! instead it depends on the music itself.
“There are catchy hooks that are perfect for TikTok dances,” explains Smith. “The lyrics are theatrical and perfect for TikToks.”
ABBA himself has sincerely bowed to TikTok virality; The band joined the app in August 2021 and used the app to promote their latest Grammy-nominated album in 2021. journey, in the following months. They are still active to this day with over 3 million followers.
At ABBA Voyage in London, the band’s cross-generational and global appeal has never been more evident; When I looked around the room, it was clear that the enthusiastic participants did not have a dominant demographic. There were millennial couples. There was a young boy who sang the words of “Dancing Queen”. There was a man in his fifties accompanying almost every song, already wearing an ABBA Voyage sweatshirt. There were women in their sixties dressed as ABBA, embarrassing the rest of us for not getting into the spirit with our own sparkly costumes. There were countless mother-daughter hugs during “Thanks for the Music”.
ABBA magic is truly alive and well in 2023, and there are no signs that this particular journey will end anytime soon.