Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Music journalist Gradvill chronicles Swedish pop band ABBA's rise to stardom in his colorful debut. Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson met in the Swedish music scene in 1966, became songwriting partners, and later teamed up with Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad--their girlfriends and, eventually, wives--to form ABBA in 1972. The author traces the group's trajectory from their upset win in the 1973 Eurovision Song Contest with "Waterloo," through "Mamma Mia" and "Dancing Queen," hits so massive they would have "earned a place in music history even if they had not recorded another song." Yet mixing their personal lives with their careers brought challenges, sometimes expressed to memorable effect in songs like "Winner Take All," which memorialized Björn and Agnetha's divorce. The eventual fraying of both relationships led to the band going dark in 1982, though they never officially disbanded and started playing together again in 2016. Gradvall finds at the root of ABBA's success a tension between melancholic, synth-infused melodies and seemingly banal lyrics--creating a depth, he contends, that distinguished their music from similarly bubbly pop tracks. Such insightful and energetic analysis mostly makes up for the book's sometimes confusing chronology. The result is an unapologetically affectionate ode to one of pop's biggest acts. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
With tunes as intoxicating as a bottle of aquavit, ABBA has enjoyed worldwide popularity for over 50 years, notably becoming Sweden's first winner in the Eurovision Song Contest with 1974's "Waterloo," backed by an orchestra led by a conductor dressed as Napoleon. Gradvall, an award-winning writer on pop culture, takes a deep dive into the story of Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, based on decades of exclusive interviews with the four ABBA members. He writes that their sound constantly changed and evolved through the years, including a disco phase, a synth-pop phase, and more. The book's biographical chapters on each ABBA member are interspersed with the origin stories of many of their hit songs and behind-the-scenes accounts of music production set in modern Swedish pop culture. ABBA is still vital: their virtual concert film/tour, ABBA Voyage, has been touring since 2022, and their Broadway musical Mamma Mia (which ran from 2001 to 2015) is returning to Broadway in August 2025. VERDICT This biography is a winner for any pop music or pop culture collection.--Carolyn M. Mulac
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A wide-ranging cultural study of the Swedish pop icons. This book by Swedish music journalist Gradvall is comprehensive--he had access to all four ABBA members--but structurally irreverent, taking its cues from Craig Brown's history-in-fragments method. So rather than start with biographies of each member (songwriters Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson and singers Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad), it opens with the group's collapse in 1982, filtered through its single "The Day Before You Came," then skips to an exploration of Sweden's dansbandvocal music before hopscotching around its key musical moments and influences. Good strategy: It shakes the stiffness out of a music biography of a pop group that was a little off-kilter, from the broken English of its lyrics to the lurking somberness of even its jauntiest tunes. (The book's subtitle,Melancholy Undercover, refers to Andersson's assessment of the predominant characteristic of their music.) Gradvall's approach also reveals unusual moments for a group that seemed carefully machined: the tweaks to Eurovision contest rules that made "Waterloo" their first major hit, the tensions between dansbandand the ersatz-American raggareculture that the group exploited, the importance of LGBTQ+ culture in keeping the group relevant after their breakup, the backlash against the group as pompous and irrelevant when Sweden's politics took a leftward turn, and various odd cultural collisions (to make a 1977 Australian tour viable, they agreed to a kind of cultural exchange program that made AC/DC big in Sweden). Despite all the interviews, the "Abbas" (as he calls them) remain somewhat mysterious, avoiding details about divorces and other matters that might tamper too much with their legacy. But the story is leavened by Gradvall's personal observations of how influential the group was in their native country, especially their breakthrough 1976 album,Arrival, which "sounds as if the sun had signed a record contract." A fun, thorough, and considered appreciation of a major pop act. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
