ABBA at 50

Product Information

Based in Lancashire since 1994, after a free transfer from Surrey following five years of 500-mile round-trips on the back of a Turkish holiday romance in 1989. Anytime people, everywhere, if I was interviewed about ABBA – and people inevitably asked if I thought there was going to be a reunion – at one point I would say, ‘There’s no chance whatsoever. From the group’s outlandish outfits to the toll commercial success took on the private lives of the two married couples, this book is a must for all ABBA fans. The balance of "ABBA at 50" delivered as a somewhat generic coffee-table book, made me long for a higher quality, distinctive experience from other Magnus Palm books or to simply revisit the most recent ABBA Voyage showbook interviews for the ultimate artist recap.

What I really took away from this book was a greater appreciation for the work that went into the songs, the musicianship and engineering as well as the songwriting. Then, last November, after a 40-year hiatus, the band released their 10 th studio album, Voyage, simultaneously announcing an accompanying ‘virtual concert residency’ – featuring their digital avatars, dubbed ‘ABBAtars’. As far as I know … and for me – and I guess it’s the same for you, at least to an extent – I’ve been working from home for 30 years, so things just continued as they always had, largely.

Regarding Voyage, the sixth ABBA studio album to top the UK charts and their 10 th chart-topping LP in this country altogether, last time we spoke you told me you had access to exclusive material that few had before, with official permission, when writing ABBA: The Complete Recording Sessions. The ABBA machine continues to function, and the industry around the band clearly continues to flourish. Depicting the group as they appeared in 1977 in a motion-capture hologram show held in the ABBA Arena, a purpose-built venue within East London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, their 22-song set each night included two singles from their comeback LP and plenty of old hits. The author has included little known tidbits about the writing process, touring, costumes, biographies and increasingly stressed family life. 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.

A People's History of Slade (Spenwood Books, 2023) and This Day in Music's Guide to The Clash (This Day in Music, 2018), currently writing, editing and collating Solid Bond in Your Heart: A People's History of The Jam (Spenwood Books, 2024). Of course, most of us will always equate the proper arrival of the band with a certain event at The Dome in Brighton on April 6, 1974. The same goes for having each album's details at the end of each chapter; the integrated discography works for me in this presentation.That’s always a thrill, you know, when you have a new book out, and it’s, ‘Oh, wow, it actually exists! 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. among 20 top-10 singles – including classic hits such as ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Mamma Mia’, ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, ‘The Winner Takes It all’, ‘Super Trouper’ and ‘Take a Chance on Me’.