Abba: Eurovision’s most successful winners

It's 40 years since Abba won the Eurovision. As Ireland chooses its 2014 entry, Suzanne Harrington looks back at the competition's most successful winners.

HERE’S something to make you feel old — it’s been 40 years since Abba won the Eurovision with ‘Waterloo’, in Brighton in 1974. That’s four decades since the music of Abba earwormed its way into the music department of our brains and lodged there.

The band have long since broken up — over 30 years ago, in 1982 — but their influence is as ingrained in pop culture as, say, The Beatles. It’s just that Abba were never that cool.

In fact, for millions of us, an undying affection for Abba was the love that dared not speak its name. Even in 1992, on the release of their greatest hits album Abba Gold, the record had to be issued in plain black and gold rather than with images of the four band members on the front cover.

We couldn’t bear to admit that we were Abba fans, even though the album went on to sell in the region of 30 million copies worldwide. That’s a lot of secret Abba devotees — their overall global sales are around 370 million.

Not liking Abba is not liking pop music. With their Beach Boys melodies, universal catchiness and easy linguistic internationalism – ‘Hasta Manana’, ‘Voulez Vous’, ‘Money Money Money’, ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ — the Abba appeal was always broad. They were like The Carpenters in terms of lush melody, but without the whiff of tragedy; instead, they were spangly and robust and fanciable. The girls, I mean. The boys were weirdy beardy musos, and the fact that the group consisted of two married couples made their huge gay following all the more interesting. Or as Benny famously said, “I don’t get it … did we look like transvestites or something?”

Well, yes, a bit. But their enduring gay appeal involves several Abba aspects working together in glorious harmony – joyful, camp pop tunes, two gorgeous singers who have inspired a million drag acts, and a kitsch factor so intense that ‘Dancing Queen’ was voted Gayest Song Ever at the Sydney Mardi Gras in 2008 — gayer even than Village People’s YMCA. That takes some doing.

Although we love them in Europe, Australia is fanatically keen on Abba. The influence of the Swedish pop group — embedded within Australian culture, gay and straight — was kick started in 1977 when Abba toured there and played to 160,000 people.

In the same year, Lasse Halstrom made Abba: The Movie, a sort of prototype reality TV documentary about the Australian tour, which cemented the band’s popularity there even further; there was a feeling of affection for the Swedes for coming all that way down under, unlike many of their contemporaries. Australia was just too far away.

The influence of Abba pops up in classic Australian movies like Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Muriel’s Wedding. Australia has also given the world Bjorn Again — since its formation in Melbourne in 1988, it has grown into a global franchise of performers pretending to be Abba. Speaking in faux Swedish accents, the characters have named themselves Agnetha Falstart, Benny Anderwear, Frida Longstokin, and Bjorn Volvo-us.

The real Bjorn and Benny heartily approve of the tribute act, saying that Bjorn Again are the nearest thing to listening to Abba apart from Abba itself, which, they say, they will never reform. And they mean it — they have allegedly turned down a billion pounds to perform together again.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, in 1992 the pop duo Erasure released an album of Abba covers called Abba-esque. To which Bjorn Again responded with their own album, titled Erasure-ish. The same year Bono, performing in Stockholm with U2, cannily invited Benny and Bjorn onstage. “Abba have a purer joy to their music,” he said, “and that’s what makes them extraordinary.”

Elvis Costello is an Abba fan, including Abba Gold in a list of his all time favourite and when Abba allowed Madonna to sample ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ in 2005, it made the first single from her Confessions album, ‘Hung Up’, a massive hit. Like popping candy for the brain.

Away from the dance floor, the Abba influence became even more enormous with the opening of the stage musical Mamma Mia in 1999. What a terrible idea, people thought at the time. How indescribably naff. Except it wasn’t – because it was full of Abba tunes, and we were unable to resist. The next thing, we are watching Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan singing unlikely Abba songs to each other on a Greek island, in one of the most successful guilty-pleasure movie musicals ever. !!!

Fifteen years later the stage musical is still running in London’s West End, and has also run on Broadway and in Las Vegas. More provincially, the naff, but much loved Steve Coogan character, Alan Partridge, adopted an Abba track as his catchphrase – Knowing Me, Knowing You. (A-haaaa!)

There is a theory that Abba’s resurgent popularity in the late 1990s was linked with the increasing growth of hip hop, with its rhythm-driven machismo. By comparison, Abba, all soaring harmonies, melodies and macho-free kitsch, was like musical comfort food.

In 2009, an Abba museum opened in Stockholm, and in 2010, Abba World took the show on the road. Rather than reform – the four Abba members are now in their mid to late sixties, and definitely don’t need the money — the band sent their old stage costumes and several tons of memorabilia instead. The object of Abba World, which toured the world from London to Sydney, seemed to be brand reinforcement — it was very interactive, which meant that as well as diehards and anoraks, the exhibition sucked in lots of newer, younger fans. And it worked, despite the tickets being expensive, the show was a huge success.

Although there have been lurid tabloid tales about the private lives of the Abba members — especially Agnetha, the one everyone fancied, who admittedly did arouse interest when she started dating her stalker a few years back— part of Abba’s enduring appeal is that they kept their mystique. Despite both couples splitting, they turned their divorces not into newspaper headlines but instead into fabulous, tragic pop songs – ‘Knowing Me Knowing You’, ‘The Winner Takes It All’.

There were no tell-alls, no public meltdowns, no histrionics, no messy trips to rehab, no slanging matches, no court cases. Or if there were, we didn’t hear about them. This reserve, coupled with their magical ability to make great pop, meant that Abba stayed with us long after its individual members had moved on. Abba is no longer a ‘them’ – it is a vibrant pop cloud, cheerfully inane, sung in comedy Swinglish, which hovers over our musical heritage, like The Beatles. Only far, far less cool.

Knowing me, knowing you

¦ Abba formed in 1972. Before that, each member had an established musical career of their own in Sweden.

¦ Their first hit single was ’Ring Ring’ in 1973.

¦ Their most popular albums were ABBA, Arrival, The Album, Voulez Vous, and Super Trooper. Their last album was The Visitors, released in 1981.

¦ Benny and Bjorn went on to write 80s musical Chess with Tim Rice and were involved with the production of Mamma Mia. Agnetha and Frida pursued solo careers.

¦ The Mamma Mia movie got the four Abba members together in public for the first time in 22 years when it premiered in Sweden.

¦ They have no plans to reform.