ZapGossip

ABBA: The music scene changed with us


ABBA’s Frida Lyngstad thinks pop music changed after the Swedish group became successful in the 1970s.

The ‘Waterloo’ hitmakers – including Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog and Benny Andersson – claim the music scene shifted when they started writing chart hits.

Frida told the Guardian newspaper’s G2: "The music scene changed with us – something like ABBA didn’t exist before, pop like that was not invented yet."

After their huge success early on, Bjorn feels they should have stuck to what they were good at instead of trying to go in a different musical direction with songs like their 1973 single ‘Ring Ring’.

He explained: "If you look at the singles we released straight after ‘Waterloo’, we were trying to be more like The Sweet, a semi-glam rock group. Which was stupid because we were always a pop group."

Bjorn was annoyed when critics claimed the band created hits to order and the songs didn’t have any heart.

He said: "Waterloo, Mamma Mia, Fernando, Dancing Queen, The Winner Takes It All … are they made to a formula?

"What is that formula? It’s totally the opposite. We never repeated ourselves. We worked so hard to find different styles every time."