The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover

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 [ABBA] 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)