ABBA at 50 skillfully treads the line of entertaining the casual ABBA fan while bringing plenty of detail that the most ardent might fan might have missed. Peppered with fascinating insights and tasty anecdotes that certainly we at The Recs had not come across. Did you know that ABBA had a failed Eurovision attempt before their triumph in 1974 with Waterloo? Or that a future Hollywood director would help ABBA conquer the world? Or hilariously that Dancing Queen was originally titled Boogaloo, Honeypie became Waterloo and SOS had the working title Turn Me On.
If you ever wondered who gave ABBA their name and why it was a bit on an in-joke in Sweden, or how the famous ABBA logo with the reverse B came about, then Carl Magnus Palm has the answer for you.
Having researched and written about the group for over thirty years, Palm has acquired a knowledge and a deep understanding of what made them tick. There is a multitude of well-chosen, insightful quotes from the band members themselves, many taken from Palm’s own interviews conducted between 1993 and 2016. The love and care of songwriting comes through strongly throughout the book. A song briefly entitled The Story of My Life began as a jaunty track complete with handclaps. The songwriter duo felt there was something there but the feel wasn’t right. Four days later, they returned to the studio. Benny added some descending piano lines and over the session, the song moved more into the territory of French chanson. Liking this new direction, Björn took the backing tape home with him and began writing suitable lyrics. Unusually, he opened a bottle of whisky and tipsy, he wrote the lyrics in under an hour. The book brings the fantastic quote: “That never works, writing when you’re drunk. You think it’s wonderful but it looks terrible the next day…but that one worked”. The song they had written was The Winner Takes It All. It’s one of the many goose-bump moments you get regularly reading through the book.