my more, shall we say, normal reaction makes it seems like I’m putting it down … but I’m not really. He presents them honestly as fallible people who have gone through extraordinary things in their lives. Responsible for ABBA music reissue liner notes and several books including the exhaustively comprehensive "Bright Lights, Dark Shadows", this book comes at a perfect time.

And not only is it now 50 years of ABBA, but soon you’ll be able to mark half a century of your own journey – your Voyage, I guess – with the band, in effect from that day as an eight-year-old you picked up your first ABBA single, ‘Ring Ring’. The book charts the band's meteoric rise to stardom, plus the high and low points both professionally and in their personal lives.

The other thing is that, because everybody else is so super-excited about it, and, ‘Ooh, it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.

After winning 1974's Eurovision Song Contest with their song "Waterloo," ABBA catapulted to fame, capturing hearts across the globe with their melodic and ever-so-catchy pop songs. 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. From their humble beginnings in post-war Sweden to global superstardom, ABBA at 50 charts the remarkable story of this Swedish quartet. ABBA AT 50" by Palazzo Editions, follows ABBA's surprise new music announcement after a 40 year pause alongside the universally-praised digital show, ABBA Voyage.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. But he soon put me right, telling me that while it was first released in ’73 – the title track of their debut LP – it didn’t chart until just after their Eurovision success, subtly telling me, ‘That’s both right and wrong – ha! The author balances the professional aspects (recording, touring and promoting, studio interactions) with the personal aspects (romantic relationships and children) seamlessly.

It’s very detailed stories about how the album sleeves were put together, it’s about chart success, it’s about how the record company people in the UK and the US primarily promoted or tried to promote their music. 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. This was an interesting book and I learned a lot about a band I loved and found it so interesting especially the beginning. The book is also full of fantastic photographs of the quartet - from their lives before ABBA, during and after. They’re like The Beatles now, in the sense that they’re part of the culture … it’s a reference point, it’s everything else, you know.ABBA at 50' is packed with history, trivia and photographs of the band from birth till the present day. 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.

After winning 1974’s Eurovision Song Contest with their song “Waterloo,” ABBA catapulted to fame, capturing hearts across the globe with their melodic and ever-so-catchy pop songs. 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. Yeah, I have, I mean it’s mostly just a matter of typing it out and finding the right tone for that book. Even my teenage daughters love Abba and because I knew next to nothing about them I couldn’t wait to read this book.This book charts the journey of ABBA from their separate beginnings in pop, forming the group, Eurovision 1974 (how embarrassing that the UK judges gave them zero points 😳), their rise to worldwide fame, personal relationships, the break up and right through to Mamma Mia the musical and ABBA voyage (which I’ve seem and is absolutely amazing! Beautifully illustrated with essential images, it examines the group’s enduring legacy and much-loved musical repertoire of perfectly crafted pop. There’s a lot about that, and it’s about chart positions, and I’ve gone through hundreds of album and single reviews from – primarily – the American and British music press, putting in extracts from that as well. This makes a great coffee table book and I can picture it generating some interesting conversations.