ABBA’s divorce years rewrote their brightest pop
Four Stockholm musicians—Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad—formed ABBA in 1972 and became one of history’s bestselling acts. At their peak they were two married couples. As both marriages collapsed, the hits darkened, turning private fracture into pop that still sells more than 150 million records.
Eurovision victory for Sweden with “Waterloo” in 1974 made them global; in 2005 that song was voted the contest’s best in a fiftieth-anniversary poll. No earlier act from a country that does not use English as its main tongue had locked in steady hits across Britain, Australia, the United States and kindred markets; they still top Sweden’s sales ledger and lead bands from mainland Europe. UK tallies include eight straight number-one albums and, as of late 2012, 11.3 million singles sold—third among singles artists there. The compilation ABBA Gold later went multi-platinum on a vast scale and logged a record 1,248 weeks in the UK top 100.
Before the acronym, each member was already a Swedish star. Fältskog hit number one at eighteen with a self-penned song that sold over 80,000 copies. Ulvaeus fronted the Hootenanny Singers; Andersson’s Hep Stars were dubbed “the Swedish Beatles,” scoring 1966 number ones such as “Sunny Girl.” Lyngstad, Norwegian-born, won a 1967 talent contest and later cut number ones produced by Andersson. The couples’ first shared hit, credited to Björn & Benny, was “Hej, gamle man,” which topped Svensktoppen for fifteen weeks. A 1970 cabaret act, Festfolket, flopped except for that song—pushing them back toward the studio chemistry that became ABBA.
After a December 1982 split, Andersson and Ulvaeus kept writing for stage and film while the women pursued solo work. Mamma Mia! opened in 1999 and remains among the ten longest-running Broadway (closed 2015) and West End shows; the 2008 film topped UK box office that year. Voyage (5 November 2021) was their first album in forty years, and the avatar residency ABBA Voyage opened in London’s purpose-built arena in May 2022, passing four million attendance by April 2026.
Source: ABBA
