Overview

'Almost as miraculous as the songs it exists to celebrate.' PETE PAPHIDES 'The only ABBA book that the world will ever need.' TONY PARSONS 'Writing perfection on musical perfection: book heaven.' CAITLIN MORAN Through exclusive interviews and over a decade of deep research, renowned music journalist Jan Gradvall explores the secrets to ABBA's success. More than half a century after their songs were recorded, ABBA still make people the world over dance and sing their hearts out. After interviewing the four members for an article in 2013 - at which time the band had not been interviewed for over thirty years - Jan Gradvall was granted unique access to them for the next decade. In The Book of ABBA, the band share their thoughts and opinions more openly than ever before, while Jan reveals the context in which their sound developed - and shows how the story of ABBA is also the story of Sweden and the globalisation of pop culture. From their chart-topping ABBA Voyage - their first album in forty years - to the two-million-ticket-selling concert-experience of the same name, it is undeniable that, in the history of pop culture and music, there has never been a group like ABBA. With remarkable intimacy, Gradvall's book brings readers closer than ever to one of the world's most notoriously private music icons.

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9780571390984

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Jan Gradvall, born 1963, is an award-winning writer and Sweden's most respected music journalist of the last 40 years. He has written several books on popular culture before, but says that Melancholy Undercover 'feels as though everything I've written about music has led up to this book.' Gradvall won Journalist of the Year, awarded by trade organization Sweden's Magazines in 2001 and was instrumental in the founding of the Swedish Music Hall of Fame, for which he served as chairman in its first three years. He has a uniquely close journalistic relationship with ABBA, and has appeared in two BBC documentaries, The Joy of ABBA and Flatpack Pop, about the Swedish songwriting phenomenon, before writing Melancholy Undercover.

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