How ABBA Members' Divorces Became Their Most Heartbreaking Hits

ABBA broke up precisely when the relationships within its two couples fell apart — this is confirmed by the musicians themselves in a new biography by Swedish journalist Jan Gradvall, "ABBA: The Hidden Melancholy." The book has now also been published in Czech by JOTA.

ABBA was never just a band — it was a union of two couples in love: Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson. That closeness is precisely what made the group possible — and, as its members admit, its unraveling ultimately brought the whole story to an end.

The tale of two couples

Agnetha and Björn first met in May 1968, though the beginning was anything but romantic — Björn's bandmates from the Hootenanny Singers gave the young singer, who'd arrived late for a performance, a rather cold reception. Real feelings only sparked a year later, during the filming of a TV show, when Björn offered to warm up Agnetha after she'd been freezing on a fishing boat.

Frida and Benny had actually met even earlier — backstage at Sweden's Eurovision selection tour in 1969 — but back then they exchanged nothing more than a brief hello. Later, these two couples gave birth to a band that would become one of the most successful in pop music history.

A divorce that became a hit

Agnetha and Björn's marriage was the first to end, and the fallout inevitably found its way into the music. The book's authors directly link the song The Winner Takes It All, sung by Agnetha, to their divorce. Agnetha rarely listens to her own recordings, but she makes an exception for this one — she says she puts it on whenever she's feeling insecure, as a reminder of just how well she managed to sing it back then.

A similar meaning was later attached to When All Is Said and Done, which the book connects to Frida and Benny's split, even though, as usual, the lyrics were written by Björn. Back in 1982, The Who's Pete Townshend noted that ABBA was one of the first major international bands to tackle midlife crisis in their songs.

A divorce announced in the headlines

The breakup between Benny and Frida proved especially painful. On February 12, 1981, Frida went out to buy milk and learned about their divorce from newspaper headlines — by her own account, she couldn't bring herself to leave the house for a week afterward. When the divorce was finalized, Benny took only an ashtray and four paintings from their shared home.

"Of course it affected the band. We're only human. It was a painful breakup. Without the divorces, we might have lasted a few more years," Frida admits. Benny himself didn't initially see the end of the band as final and believed in a comeback — a hiatus that ended up stretching to nearly four decades.

The mood of the breakup was captured perfectly in the 1982 song The Day Before You Came, whose working title translates as "The Suffering Bird." According to the band's sound engineer Michael B. Tretow, a sense of finality was already hanging in the air during its recording — the single flopped on the UK charts (peaking at No. 32) and in Australia (No. 48), markets where ABBA had once reigned supreme.

Giving birth in the studio and herring in the name

The book also offers some curious behind-the-scenes studio details. While recording Thank You for the Music, Agnetha was pregnant with her son Christian and had to stay on bed rest due to a risk of premature labor. The solution was simple: a cot was brought into the studio, and the singer recorded her vocals lying down — that very take made it onto the album.

There's an unusual story behind the band's name as well. Ahead of the 1974 national Eurovision selection, the musicians decided to call themselves ABBA — only to discover that the name already belonged to a well-known Swedish canned fish company, best known for its pickled herring. The musicians were given permission to use the name for free, on one condition: behave decently and don't damage the brand's reputation. Confusion was inevitable all the same — fans from around the world kept calling the fish company looking for the band.

Melancholy beneath the shine

It's exactly this contrast between flawless pop gloss and the members' personal losses that explains the new book's title. "Even our happiest songs are melancholic at their core. That melancholy is hidden somewhere deep inside," says Benny Andersson. In the end, ABBA the band lasted longer than the relationships that gave birth to it — and its most emotionally powerful songs emerged precisely as its members' personal lives were falling apart.

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Source: denik.cz