Thank You for the Music - 30 years on..
On April 6, 2004, it is exactly 30 years since ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their zestful performance of 'Waterloo'.

The four members of ABBA; Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid changed the style of music from that day, with their winning performance at the Pavillion Theatre, Brighton UK. The Swedish foursome, who wrote and played the music, revelled in Abbamania. ABBA dominated the charts throughout the 1970s, selling more than 350 million albums.

Thank you for the music
The ABBA story started in June 1966 when Björn Ulvaeus met Benny Andersson for the first time.

Björn was a member of the Hootenanny Singers, a very popular folk music group, while Benny played keyboards in Sweden’s biggest pop group of the 1960s, The Hep Stars.

In the spring of 1969, Björn and Benny met the two women who were to become not only their fiancées but also the other half of ABBA: Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

The group got their first big break in 1974 when they won the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton with Waterloo. They called themselves ABBA, an acronym of their first names (the first B usually faced backwards to signify the two partnerships which made up the band). ABBA was also the name of a Swedish canned-fish company, which luckily agreed to lending their name to a pop group.

Waterloo shot to number one in the charts all over Europe, and even reached the US top ten. Björn later went on to say that "winning Eurovision was like Sweden winning the World Cup".

After the success of Waterloo, the band released SOS which reached the UK top ten, proving that they weren’t one-hit wonders.

In 1976, they returned to the top of the UK singles chart with Mamma Mia, which also topped the charts in Germany. Their next 12 consecutive singles, released up to the end of 1979, reached the top five of the UK chart, and included five more UK No1 hits: Fernando, Dancing Queen, also their only US No1, Knowing Me, Knowing You, The Name Of The Game and Take A Chance On Me.

1977 saw the release of ABBA - The Movie, shot on location in Australia, where the group was hugely successful.

In 1980 the band reached the top of the charts again with Super Trouper, and The Winner Takes All to give them a record equalling nine No1 UK hits.

In 1983, the band disbanded. Anni-Frid and Agnetha embarked on solo careers, initially with some success, but the appeal of their records was simply less attractive to record-buyers than had been the case with ABBA’s.

Bjorn Again are the best known of the ABBA tribute bands. It is estimated that there are always at least 100 such outfits playing around the world at any one time - more than for any other group.

The success story continued in the 1990s with the release of Mamma Mia! a musical based on the songs of ABBA. Opening in the West End in 1999, it was to become one of the world’s most popular musicals, with more than ten million seeing it during its five-year run

In November, Mamma Mia! comes to Edinburgh. The tale of family and friendship, set on a tiny Greek island, broke all records north of the Border when it achieved record ticket sales of £200,000 on its first day

I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do was ABBA’s least successful single. It peaked at No38 and stayed in the charts for only six weeks.

Agnetha played Mary Magdalene in the controversial musical Jesus Christ Superstar in the Seventies.

More than 3,300 ABBA CDs are sold around the world every day. They have sold about 400 million CDs and records in the 30 years since Waterloo. ABBA were such a hit in Sweden that a special rule was brought in restricting each release to ten weeks at No1. All four band members are millionaires many times over.

Volvo was the only Swedish export to outsell ABBA in the late Seventies.