ABBA at 50

Product Information

Responsible for ABBA music reissue liner notes and several books including the exhaustively comprehensive "Bright Lights, Dark Shadows", this book comes at a perfect time. But he soon put me right, telling me that while it was first released in ’73 – the title track of their debut LP – it didn’t chart until just after their Eurovision success, subtly telling me, ‘That’s both right and wrong – ha! my more, shall we say, normal reaction makes it seems like I’m putting it down … but I’m not really. It seems apt that Voyage came out – and straight in at the top of the charts – 40 years to the month after The Visitors seemed to signal the end of the story.

Emerging victorious from Eurovision in 1974 with winning tune “Waterloo,” ABBA catapulted to fame and captured hearts across the world with their melodic and ever-so catchy pop songs.He presents them honestly as fallible people who have gone through extraordinary things in their lives. Then ‘Waterloo’ was a big hit and a remix of ‘Ring Ring’ was released in the UK, and that was the one that went to No. And this companion volume has expanded to be very much a book in itself, and it’s taking much, much longer than I had hoped for. It was a bit of a challenge, because I’m used to writing these really detailed books, but I only had 45,000 words, because that’s what they asked for … although I extended it to 50,000. For a nonfiction book it flows nicely in the story is put together well it’s all I would have to say I highly recommend this book it is a great read.

I interviewed people who used to work for CBS in the 1970s and who were involved with the ABBA catalogue, or putting together commercials, or running up to radio stations or whatever they had to do. This makes a great coffee table book and I can picture it generating some interesting conversations. It’s a band that needs no introduction, but I’ll offer one anyway, ABBA emerging victorious from the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Waterloo’, quickly catapulted to fame, capturing hearts across the world over the next few years with their melodic, ever-so-catchy pop songs.This was an interesting book and I learned a lot about a band I loved and found it so interesting especially the beginning. The biggest reason for the ABBA fan to read this book, however, are the pictures; the wonderful pictures public and private. Deep inside, I never thought they were going to do that, because the motivation didn’t seem to be there. After winning 1974’s Eurovision Song Contest with their song “Waterloo,” ABBA catapulted to fame, capturing hearts across the globe with their melodic and ever-so-catchy pop songs.

The book charts the band's meteoric rise to stardom, plus the high and low points both professionally and in their personal lives. But the 1990s ushered in a new wave of ABBA appreciation, and their music found favor again in modern popular culture. In 2021, after a forty-year hiatus, the band released a new album Voyage, and announced an accompanying concert featuring their digital avatars, dubbed "ABBAtars. But the 1990s ushered in a new wave of ABBA appreciation, and their music found favour again in modern popular culture. That’s always a thrill, you know, when you have a new book out, and it’s, ‘Oh, wow, it actually exists!With regard to listening to the back-catalogue, it’s great to wallow in nostalgia now and again, but I’m guessing that’s just a part of your life. The other thing is that, because everybody else is so super-excited about it, and, ‘Ooh, it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.