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ABBA
ABBA's roots go back to Stockholm, Sweden in the early 1970s, where Bjorn Ulvaeus sang and played guitar for the Hootenanny Singers, a popular folk-rock group, and his friend Benny Andersson played keyboard for The Hep Stars, a pop band. Both men also worked as session musicians at Stockholm's Polar Studio, where they wrote songs together and with Polar's owner, Stig Anderson, who later became ABBA's manager. Both Ulvaeus and Andersson were involved with talented female singers -- Ulvaeus with top-charting pop vocalist Agnetha Faltskog and Andersson with Norwegian-born jazz singer Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad. After working on new material and changing their name to the palindromic, universal acronym "ABBA, the group entered the 1974 Eurovision contest with the song "Waterloo." Over the next three years ABBA refined their pop sound and released numerous hits, such as "Mamma Mia," and "Fernando”. ABBA's 1978 album Album reached the Top 20 in the U.S. and went platinum in less than six months. That same year a feature-length film about the group, ABBA -- The Movie was released worldwide. In the late 1990s, ABBA remains wildly popular throughout much of the world. ABBA tribute bands such as Abbacadabra and Bjorn Again pack houses, and ABBA singles receive frequent clubplay, especially in new remixes.
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