ABBA Biography Part 2
Bjorn Ulvaeus was born in Gothenburg on Sweden’s west coast, in April of 1945, but by the age of eleven was living in the village of Vastervik on its eastern coast, where he was soon playing guitar and singing with a skiffle group. He moved on to a dance band which featured Dixieland music, and was so taken their folk music arrangements that he and some of his classmates began a folk group known as the Hootenanny Singers in 1963.
His group was able to capitalize on the folk music craze then sweeping the US, and when they showed up in a talent competition sponsored by Sweden’s television and radio stations, they were a smash. In 1966, during his third year with the Hootenanny Singers, Bjorn crossed paths with Benny, and by 1969, they had begun collaboration as songwriters which has continued to this day. It was in 1969 that Bjorn met Agnetha Faltskog, who had begun a successful recording career in 1967, and the two were married in 1971.
Agnetha was born in Jonkoping, Sweden, in April of 1950 and by the ripe old age o
f two had written her first song dedicated to two trolls. By 1966 she was a vocalist with Bernt Enghardts, a dance band, and in 1967 had a number one hit in Sweden with the recording of I Was So In Love, which she had composed for them. She continued her solo recording career until November on 1970, when she and Bjorn, along with Benny and Frida, began their cabaret show.
The four entertainers went for a while under the name of Bjorn and Benny, Agnetha and Anni Frid. As late as 1971, both Frida and Agnetha continued to record as solo artists, but all that changed in 1972, when Bjorn and Benny wrote two songs for the movie Ture Swenton and Agnetha was appearing as Mary Magdalene in the groundbreaking musical Jesus Christ Superstar, Frida’s recording contract had expired and she signed with Bjorn and Benny’s recording company, Polar Music.
By 1974, Bjorn and Benny, Agnetha and Anni Frid had so polished their act that they won the Eurovision Song Contest in Britain with their song Waterloo. The group had soon changed its name to ABBA, and the most popular pop group in Swedish history, and one of the most popular in all of pop music history, was born!
Before their time in the spotlight ended, ABBA had produced eight albums, a string of single hit records, and a movie over a span of eight years, during which each of the couples divorced, but stayed together as a group and even used some of their relationship struggles as material for some tracks on their 1979 album Voulez Vous. ABBA last appeared as a group in 1982.