From Dancing Queen to Oh mama to many other successes that have made the history of music. The Abba can now call themselves Knights or ‘Commanders 1st Class of the Order of Vasa’ after receiving the honor from the King of Sweden on Friday afternoon (31 May). Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad And Björn Ulvaeus they went to the royal palace in Stockholm to receive the honor from King Carl XVI Gustaf and from Queen Silvia. “It is Sweden’s thanks for your institutional contribution to the world,” the King said in his opening speech, reported by the TT news agency.
Awarding titles to non-royal family members was abolished in Sweden in 1975 but reintroduced by the government in 2022. This year Abba they are also celebrating 50 years since they won the Eurovision song contest in Brighton, with their hit Waterloo. In addition to the Abbatoday another 13 people received honors from the King.
Abba are considered internationally among the most successful musical groups. In their long career they have sold more than 150 million records worldwide, with constant sales every year and are among the most celebrated exponents of international pop music. The group’s name is an acronym formed from the initial letters of the members’ names (Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid). In the second version of the group’s logo, starting from 1976 the first ‘B’ appears reversed (????) on all their album covers and promotional material. The group was formed around 1972 with the lineup that it would always maintain: Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog And Anni-Frid Lyngstad, known as Frida.
Four years later they were already at the peak of their musical career after having won the Eurovision Festival in 1974 with Waterloo. At the height of their fame, both of the band members’ marriages (Björn to Agnetha and Benny to Frida) failed. The group disbanded in 1982 and, for more than thirty years, no reunion was planned by the four again. In 2000 it was proposed to the Abba to reunite for a tour of one hundred concerts in exchange for a fee of one billion dollars, but they refused “so as not to disappoint the fans”. On March 15, 2010 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 2018 they announced their return to activity, resuming recording two new songs, one of which entitled I Still Have Faith in You. But the return was long in coming, also due to the Coronavirus pandemic, until September 2, 2021, when two new singles were finally released (I Still Have Faith in You And Don’t Shut Me Down) as a preview of the album Voyagereleased on 5 November 2021, and a series of concerts in London was announced starting in May 2022. They were the first non-English speaking group in Europe to achieve such widespread success in countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
