|
| A |
|
ABBA's biography
|
Encouraged by this success, they entered the 1973 Swedish selections for the Eurovision Song Contest with the song �Ring Ring�. They finished third, but the single and the album of the same name competed for the top positions on the Swedish chart. �Ring Ring� also became a hit in several other European countries.
The group entered the selections again in 1974, this time with �Waterloo�, which took them all the way to the finals in Brighton, England. By this time they had changed their name to ABBA, an acronym of their first names. ABBA was also the name of a Swedish canned fish company, which luckily agreed to lending their name to a pop group. The Eurovision Song Contest on April 6, 1974 turned out to be the most famous moment in ABBA history, when the group won the international juries over with �Waterloo�.
Soon after this triumph, �Waterloo� was Number One on the charts all over Europe, and even reached the US Top Ten. The album of the same name was also a huge hit in Sweden. However, the "stigma" of being winners of the Eurovision Song Contest made it difficult for ABBA to be taken seriously when they tried to follow this first success. It was not until some 18 months later that they got a major worldwide hit again with �SOS�, taken off their third album, simply titled ABBA.
�Mamma Mia�, also taken from ABBA, returned the group to the UK Number One spot, which they occupied a total of nine times between 1974 and 1980. �Mamma Mia� was also a Number One hit in Australia, which was the first territory to release it as a single in August 1975. Over the next few years, Australia would be caught up in a virtual ABBA fever, giving the group a total of six Number One hits.
< Previous | Next > |
|
|
|
