The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover by Jan Gradvall: REVIEW

Synopsis

Music critic Jan Gradvall dives deep into music history, Swedish politics and culture, and the band members’ backstories to explain the enduring appeal of this Swedish pop band and to tell The Story of ABBA.

My Review

I grew up on the music of ABBA. My parents have been huge fans since the moment they first heard ‘Waterloo’ on the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, so in between listening to my Winnie the Pooh and The Wombles records as a kid, I’d often put on an ABBA album to get my parents singing and dancing. This band never seemed “uncool” to me simply because they were from my parents’ generation. On the contrary, I was proud of my parents for having good taste. Every single ABBA song was really good and drew out an emotional response from me. And because they’d always get my parents singing and dancing, I’ve always associated ABBA with joy and family togetherness.

And yet, I knew very little about the band members themselves. So when I saw this book available for anyone to read on NetGalley, I snapped it up.

What The Story of ABBA is and isn’t

If you would only pick this up to get the deets on celebrity scandals, don’t bother. ABBA was pretty wholesome, at least by the standards of the music industry. Sure, the two couples that made up the group ended up divorced, but they kept it civil and private, and Gradvall respects that. There were no drugs or wild parties on their tours to talk about either. Nobody got arrested. Nobody hated anybody else. The two guys (Benny and Björn) were best friends who loved to write songs together, and their wives (Anni-Frid and Agnetha) supported and complemented each other both on and off the stage. They really were just 4 incredibly talented musicians who got together for a while to make groundbreaking music. This book doesn’t offer up any drama.

What this book offers is context. Gradvall provides a brief biography of each ABBA member in turn, and their lives really are quite interesting to read about, but the main focus of this book is on the world around them. In any other place and time, would a group like ABBA have been taken seriously? Would they have had the opportunity to make such a lasting impact on the music industry? Would they have changed as many lives and meant as much to as many people? Once you take a closer look at what was happening in the world in the 1970s and 80s, and the social movements that kept ABBA’s music alive throughout the 90s and into the 2000s, you might begin to wonder. It’s clear that ABBA came along at the exact moment that the world needed them.

The bottom line

I really enjoyed this book a lot. I kept giving my parents a summary of everything I’d learned about ABBA each day, and I’ll probably buy them a copy once it’s on sale. I’m so happy that this didn’t turn out to be about scandals and fast living. I wouldn’t have enjoyed that at all. Instead, Gradvall somehow captured the comforting, feel-good magic of ABBA within these pages, and I’ve walked away an even bigger fan of them and their music.

Pre-order The Story of ABBA now from Bookshop.org* (Release Date: June 17)
*As an affiliate, I will receive a small commission from any purchase made through this link

Many thanks to NetGalley for giving me an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.