It was precisely 50 years ago, on April 6, 1974, that ABBA made themselves known to the world by winning the Eurovision contest. It was the first time they performed under this name and Waterloo was the first big success for the Swedish quartet, which would become a worldwide phenomenon in the following years.
Success after success, they built a solid fan base all over the place. It was the result of many effective pop songs, but also of well-defined strategies that made them a band that broke barriers and canons.
At the same time, they were never consensual. Until they separated in 1982 (the reunion only taking place very recently, starting in 2016), criticism was almost always unfavorable to the group’s work. Has a prejudice been built? And half a century later, where are we? Do ABBA get the recognition they deserve? Is it already cool to dance to Swedish music?
It wasn’t the first or the second. For a few years now, the band formed in the early 70s by two couples — Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog — has been trying its luck at Eurovision. They had competed, in some cases solo but also in groups, at Melodifestivalen, the Swedish Song Festival, where the national representative who would go on to Eurovision was determined.
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In 1973, while Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid, had entered the competition with the single Ring Ring, but only managed to take third place on the podium. However, it was the band’s conviction — and that of its manager Stig Anderson, the founder of the publisher Polar Music — that Eurovision would be an excellent international showcase to affirm the group’s qualities as interpreters, performers, composers and producers. And they were right.
[a atuação dos Abba na final da Eurovisão de 1974:]
After winning Melodifestivalen with Waterloo, translated the lyrics into English, something unusual, to take to the international festival. It was ABBA’s debut with this name, a palindrome that combined the initials of the four names. On a tough night, they managed to beat the Italian song by a few points. It was a close call, but they became the winners of Eurovision, in a moment of glory that would have much more resonance over the years.
In London, the British capital, a young Tozé Brito watched the events of the night. “I perfectly remember the impact it had on seeing a group that, at the time, completely deviated from the aesthetics of Eurovision, both musical and visual”, he recalls to the Observador, who a few years later would be editor of ABBA in Portugal , while an executive at Polygram.
“The group broke all the canons. We are talking about 1974, a time when music mainstream it was very much in the same vein as the Italian, French and even Spanish songs that had dominated the festival for a long time. They were much more traditional songs and suddenly a fresh, completely different song appeared”, he argues. “A Waterloo It has incredible strength, it’s no coincidence that people still sing it. This is a trial by fire. When a song is so effective that almost 90% of people can sing or hum the chorus, something is done well. And they did it many times.”
For Nuno Galopim, music critic and current director of Antena 1, as well as being an admitted Eurovision enthusiast and a key figure in the production of the Festival da Canção, that was the “moment of revelation” and ABBA’s “entry onto the scene”.