W.When Abba announced their first new album in 39 years last week, Benny Andersson said the band’s most memorable concert experience was their first Australian gig, in 1977 in torrential rain in Sydney. It was pouring rain, mud and 50,000 umbrellas everywhere. It was a wonderful sight. “
Australia’s feverish affection for Abba has long been a curiosity to other countries. Pre-orders for Abba’s upcoming album Voyage are already sold out on the Australian side, but our national devotion to these flamboyant Swedes has been strong for 46 years.
I was five years old when I first heard the euphoric opening bars of Dancing Queen. From that moment on I was tied up.
I coveted my mother’s Abba Gold CD and pored over the liner notes, which to this day are dog-eared and covered in sticky, yogurt-like fingerprints. My best friend, Lucy, also had a hard time and it was perhaps a strange sight for two five-year-olds in 1992 to play “Abba” in the playground and vie for our favorite member Anni-Frid (it was always Lucy because she was brunette and I was blonde). We even forced our younger siblings to play the roles of Benny and Bjorn, which they would reluctantly do.
Twenty-nine years later, my blatant infatuation with Abba has still not subsided, and last week’s announcement marked a day I never thought would come.
After moderate success in European countries, Australia catapulted Abba to star in 1975 after the music video for I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do was broadcast on Countdown. From there, Abba held number 1 on the charts for 39 weeks in 1976, with Fernando spending a whopping 14 weeks at number 1 in Australia. Countdown presenter Molly Meldrum, as is well known, made the decision not to show the music video after 12 weeks, which led to angry Abba fans breaking down a switchboard at ABC. The video was reinstated for the remainder of its # 1 position.
Australia’s feverish affection for Abba has long been a curiosity to other countries
As a five-year-old, the music videos were an important part of my fascination for Abba. I spent rainy days obsessively watching and rewinding a VHS compilation of clips, always fast-forwarding the 80s ballad One of Us, because the subject of divorce and separation was a) too complex for my five-year-old brain and b) just seemed downright boring to be when Agnetha repainted an apartment in the video (today I think this is her best work).
A 1976, a TV special from Abba-in-Australia, got more views than the 1969 moon landing. The Best of Abba was screened four times with record-breaking reviews.
Abba-mania peaked during the 1977 tour – their only concert tour of Australia and, with an entourage of 106, the largest tour ever undertaken in the country. Fans and media besieged the Swedes from the moment they stepped off the plane, climbing barricades, cyclone fences and throwing themselves in front of their cars. Abba historian Carl Magnus Palm quotes tour manager Thomas Johansson in his book Bright Lights, Dark Shadows: [the] Caravan of cars would stop – just to get an autograph. That was to the extreme, but that sums up how crazy and totally insane it was. ”According to the same book, the manager of a hotel Abba had slept in in Melbourne cut up her sheets after leaving and placed squares of them over the Sunday Observer.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser attends an Abba concert in Melbourne at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl on March 18, 1977. He is with his wife Tamie and daughters Angela and Phoebe. Photo: Central Press / Getty Images
In her autobiography As I Am: Abba Before & Beyond, Agnetha recalls the chaos that consumed Australian fans. “There was a fever, there was hysteria, there was ovation, there were sweaty, obsessed crowds. Sometimes it was terrible. I had the feeling that they would get hold of me and that I would never get away. “
With the release of ABBA Gold in 1992, the Abba revival gained momentum, but it wasn’t until 1994 when both Muriel’s Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert debuted on screens that our obsession reignited.
Muriel’s wedding, the story of a social outsider and Abba fan, opened up to the national psyche and spawned a catalog of new catchphrases, including Muriel’s joke: “Now my life is as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as Dancing Queen. ”The Australians shared our past as Abba superfans and Abba became woven into our national identity.
When ABBAWORLD, an interactive museum exhibition, toured Australia, the front wall read: “There’s nothing more Australian than an unhealthy relationship with Abba.”
Every May, thousands of people come to the small New South Wales town of Trundle to celebrate Australia’s only Swedish supergroup festival.
Australian fans lucky enough to get their hands on tickets to one of the virtual concerts performed by Abba-tars and held in a purpose-built arena in London are all holding their breath, unsure of international travel restrictions enable them to make the pilgrimage next year.
But for me as a five year old and for many of us in Australia who woke up at 2:45 a.m. last Friday to the worldwide announcement, news of a brand new album is easy brought a surreal consolation in uncertain times.
