I loveABBA and was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, it was boring, and I just could not finish it.

6/10

Like almost everybody who grew up in the 80s, I was an ABBA fan. I don’t know much about them so was pretty excited to read this book.

I definitely learned a lot about the band and the four people in it. I have so much more respect for them than I did before. I actually didn’t realize how influential they were with their music. I mean, I knew they were popular, but I thought the BeeGees far surpassed them in terms of influence. This book changed my mind.

It’s too bad the book wasn’t better written. At least it isn’t written well for an American audience, maybe it’s better for a Swedish reader.

The book goes down these tangents that seem to have little to do with the band members or the band. There’s a whole long chapter about the woman who wrote the Mamma Mia! play, including her background, family life and all sorts of things that have no real relevance to the story.

Also, the book isn’t necessarily written in a linear fashion. In general it goes from the beginning to end of their career, but there are a whole bunch of time shifts that happen in the process.

Here’s the bottom line, if you want to learn more about ABBA or you’re a big fan, you’ll get enough interesting stuff in this book to keep you going. If you’re just looking for an interesting band biography, maybe start somewhere else.

#netgalley #thestoryofabba

I LOVE ABBA. I've listened to their records countless times and always feel so uplifted by the music. And I know I always will. So, when I saw this on NetGalley with the apt subtitle of 'Melancholy Undercover," I knew immediately I wanted to check out this book.

I loved learning more about about each individual members' backstories before they met and the historical and cultural context around their upbringings and the formation of their musicality and them as a group.

But unfortunately, I did DNF this. I found the writing style uninteresting and repetitive despite the interesting information. This might be something I could return to and read slowly overtime out of simple interest in the subject matter, but it's not a book I can read in a few weeks or even a few months. So I'm putting it down for now.

That being said, I would definitely still recommend this to ABBA fans and history fans for the learning you'll get out of it.

Thank you NetGalley and the Publisher for access to this book! Even though I did have to turn away, I appreciated what I learned during the time I did spend with it.

Anyone who is a fan of the group ABBA will enjoy this book. Their music has been a part of the worldwide consciousness since the 1970's, but the Swredish musical group and their backstory has not. This comprehensive book covers the lives, musical backgrounds, life tragedies, and personal triumphs of the four ABBA members. Like the Beatles, they disbanded at the height of their popularity (mainly due to the divorces of the couples within the group,) Like the Beatles, the individual members went on to solo careers, and similar to the Beatles, it is their original supergroup which defines them. Excellent book!

The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover by Jan Gradvall is a exploration of the legendary Swedish pop group ABBA. The book delves beyond their music, offering insights into Swedish cultural history, societal shifts, and unexpected global connections. Gradvall, who has interviewed all four members of ABBA, combines his extensive research with personal reflections, making the book both informative and engaging.

The storytelling and unique approach is to be praised, highlighting its coverage of topics like the tax policies that influenced ABBA’s flamboyant outfits and the band’s impact in countries like Vietnam and the former Eastern Bloc. It’s to be appreciated how the book ties ABBA’s history to broader cultural and political contexts, but on the other hand found its deep dives into musical influences particularly scattered and hard to follow.

I've been an ABBA fan for years, but I knew next to nothing about their history. The Story of ABBA by Jane Gradvall filled in a lot of those gaps.

I prefer biographies that flow like a story, and this one felt more like an encyclopedia of facts. If you already know everything about ABBA and want to dig even deeper, this is probably for you. But if you're looking for a compelling, easy-to-read biography, there’s probably a better one out there.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book is not exactly what I thought it would. I thought it was a biography and it felt more like a opinion piece on the world around ABBA.

There are enough biographies on ABBA out there so any new entries would have to have a distinct angle to be useful. In this case, this is less about the story of ABBA and more about the environment, Swedish music scene in the 1970s, Eurovision's changing rules, and the people who influenced the band. In other words, this isn't a biographic about ABBA so much as a perspective.

The book is non linear, bounces around all over the place, and is as dry as a desert. The author has a history with the band so that it is a plus; but either this read better in the original Swedish or there is just too much Swedish left in the translation that makes this a chore to slog through. The author doesn't just jump around chapter to chapter - the paragraph change eras, directions, topics at a whiplash inducing rate that is both frustrating and disenfranchising. And even that is when the chapters are discussing ABBA, which isn't often. For example you will have to go through many more pages of learning about the underground music movements in Sweden at the time (dansband and reggare - terns you will rarely find in any wikipedia or biographies about the band) and all the people involved in those movements. There are an eye wincing number of Swedish words and people - perhaps making this far more palatable if you speak Swedish and are comfortable with the language.

Admittedly, I prefer a nice linear story that lets the story unfold organically. In that regard, this book is best suited for those who know everything else about the band and want to dig a lot deeper and don't mind burning their eyes on a dry read. You'll understand why ABBA weren't loved and adored in their native Sweden, why there were some divisive issues in and out of the band, why they probably won that initial Eurovision and might otherwise have lost if done any earlier or later, etc.

So while not a terrible book, the writing is dead boring with no personality or life, there are a LOT of random facts thrown in that have no direct relevance to ABBA, and at times I felt more like I was reading a history of Sweden in the 1970s and 1980s than a band biography. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

Biographies are one of my favorite genres.
Over the years, I've dived deep into Presidential biographies, celebrity memoirs on both small and big screen, and female trailblazers.

This book, however, is my first biography focusing on a musical pop group.

Reader, “Take a Chance”(on this book).

Who influenced their music? Whose music later was influenced by them? Why did their music appeal to a diverse and wide variety of people? Let alone across the globe ? Their influence is far reaching from Asian nations to surgeons.The underlying theme to this book is their staying power over decades. It's true as generations not even born during the height of their career celebrate their music.

My favorite part though was learning how the "Mamma Mia" production came to be and how the founders emphasized using their music unedited.
 
This ARC was provided by the publisher, St. Martin's Press , via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 ⭐

I’m an ABBA fangirl!

This is an extremely detailed and highly informative unauthorized biography written by a music journalist who has spent four decades in the industry. While the content is interesting and I learned many new things, the non-linear manner in which it was presented didn’t appeal to me. I was also aware of the jarring flow that comes with translation and was frustrated with the lack of transitions between paragraphs. Many times, I couldn’t see the relationship between one paragraph to the next. These disappointments are personal preferences and in no way reflect the author’s skills or the content.

Disappointments aside, this fangirl learned:
✔️that dansband culture was crucial to ABBA’s evolution
✔️how the Swedish tax law influenced their fantasy costumes
✔️that Thank You For The Music was written in 30 minutes during a house party. He sat down and “started to play and the song was just there.”
✔️that the story of ABBA is more a tale of overcoming adversity than one of success
✔️about the two love stories that gave the group its name, A+B, B+A
✔️that the working title for ‘Dancing Queen’ was ‘Boogaloo’
✔️that Frida was conceived as part of the Lebensborn program between German soldiers and Norwegian women

After thirty years of media silence, the group agreed to the author’s request for an interview. What an honour to be there to learn directly from the source. You’ll get the scoop on everyone who came in contact on a professional level with this group and gain insight into how the lyrics reflected what was going on in their lives. I’d consider this a must-read for any ABBA fan.

I think ABBA Gold is my most listened-to album!

I was gifted this copy by the publisher through NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.