Talk:ABBA/Archive 1

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Agnetha's Breakdown?

From the text: "The last scheduled ABBA concert on the US soil, in Washington, DC, was cancelled due to Agnetha's breakdown after the plane incident."

Can this be explained better? There is no previous or subsequent mention of this in the otherwise fine article, except a note near the end that Agnetha suffered from fear of air travel. Was this an incident that occurred aboard the aircraft or after? The sentence is too vague in its present form, and should either be taken out or explained in greater detail. I would prefer more explanation, especially since it indicates a reason why the band never toured again despite their global popularity over the next three years.

Reply:

According to Agnetha's own book and recollections of 1979 tour road manager, late Bosse Norling, quoted in Abba biography "Bright Lights Dark Shadows", Agnetha suffered extreme emotional distress during the flight from NY to Boston when the private plane she was on couldn't land because of the extremely bad weather (Windsor Locks, Connecticut Tornado) and was subjected to violent turbulence and lack of fuel. Eventually, it did land and Agnetha went through the concert in Boston that was delayed for almost two hours. Next day she was forced to travel to Washington, DC, but having arrived there she locked herself in the hotel room and refused to talk to anyone, except the physician who issued the band a waiver allowing them to cancel the show in Washington, DC, without legal repercussions from the promoters. Agnetha:"Everything was just black and the plane was shaking horribly. I prayed to God that I wouldn't die" "Agnetha was hysterical, and I don't blame her. As if the terrible weather and the wobbling plane was not enough, it was pitch dark" ('Bright Lights Dark Shadows", page 415)

~~Scholar91

Taco 05:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)I'll try to add something to that affect to the paragraph....please feel free to revise.

Thanks for your responses, Scholar91 and Taco. I think the new version reads much better. Well done.

Record sales?

370 million albums??? can anyone verify this? i thought the beatles "only" sold about 80 million

you thought wrong. the beatles have sold 1.2 billion.

In 1999 with the opening of the musical Mamma Mia Abba received an award/certification for having sold 360 million albums. So the estimate given in the article is correct and by now probably close to 400 million

There is not a chance on Earth that ABBA has sold that many albums. and The Beatles have sold nowhere NEAR 1.2billion. y'all are completely insane if you believe that!

Beatles figure is correct. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/maney/2004-05-04-google_x.htm, http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=50910 --Lukobe 04:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

ABBA is nowhere near as commercially successful as people like Madonna, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, etc. and they are all roughly bouncing around 170-200 million (INCLUDING singles and everything else). so I definitely need to see some statistical proof of these 400 million (!!!) sales figures.

ABBA were presented with the award for 360 million known album sales from Univeral Records and Polar Music in April 2004 (not 1999, as previously commented). Photo of the event is shown here: http://66.235.213.139/~abbagall/abba62/worldsales_award_london_april2004.jpg This figure has been recognised by the recording industry, so cannot be disputed. It is unlikely that another 40 million has been sold in the past two years, so 365 million is a more reasonable figure to date.

Is it true that they were the biggest revenue generator for Sweden for 'x' number of years? Has anyone else heard this?

Beatles Swedish?

ABBA are a Swedish pop group, together with The Beatles one of the most successful ever.

• Ahem*. I didn't realize the Beatle's were one of the most successful Swedish pop groups ever. :) DanKeshet 17:47 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

It's a little known fact... Tuf-Kat

Actually... the Beatles were more Swedish than ABBA but not a lot of people know that. http://www.abba-story.com

Link suggestions

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problem with sentence ("the genre")

Problem sentence: "ABBA were renowned for their colorful costumes (the epitome of 1970s fashion), and also for the videos which accompanied some of their biggest hits—these being among the earliest examples of the genre." Reason: There is no reference to what "the genre" is. It could be heavy rock for all the reader knows.

It should read "...earliest examples of music videos" or somesuch. It's not really a genre it's talking about. Graham 22:47, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Should probably rather be "medium", but I don't know much about the history of it. I don't know of 60's examples of Beatles playing around and such counts, or if they were a part of something larger, rather than primarily a marketing tool, as most well-known examples today. I guess it is an impossible task to explicitly define "the first music video". 81.232.72.148 01:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

removed picture w/'dubious copyright status'

Hey guys, noticed some pictures were redone on this site - the front picture came straight from the allmusic guide - only authorized, promotional pictures are allowed to be posted on those bios, as wiki links to many music bios there. Also think the color picture up top is too large to start the article. Looks clunky - most bios start with a simple b/w image for cleaner formatting. -- Barrettmagic 20:37, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Right now I think we have just about the right balance - please don't add any more pictures, it's on the verge of becoming too many. Spare a thought for dial-up users! (and really most people know what Abba look like, the additional pictures don't really add much). The colour pic at the top of the article is fine, IMO - it's about the right size and shows all four members clearly. It might not be the perfect pic, but we aree rather restricted as to what we can use. I'd say leave it as it is (at the time of writing this) and stop fiddling! Graham 23:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Hunh -- funny that you'd comment the page is getting too big and then request to keep the large picture up top. That pic is nearly 30K alone (nearly half the size of the entire article) - the picture I replaced it with was smaller and brought the page size down. There was only one picture posted last week - now there are like five. Didnt see it as 'fiddling' - rather adjusting the article to conform with wiki standards to accomodate users like the ones you point out. -- Barrettmagic 00:06, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree it's too large, I actually preferred the one that was there last week... but it seems there are a lot of contributors to this particular article and everyone is trying to get their pet images bundled. I wasn't singling you out, but it's time to say it - there are enough images. If you want to downsample the image or replace it with a more suitable one please go ahead, but try to refrain from ADDING any more. Personally I'd prefer to see some of the newly added ones removed, they don't really add anything AFAICS - but I'm open to discussion on this. Graham 01:23, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I haven't been to the Madonna article in a while, but last I checked, EVERY SINGLE ALBUM had a picture there. I don't think it'd hurt to have three pictures. Mike H (Talking is hot) 01:13, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

You obviously haven't been there in awhile Joe ;) - that page is broken out into separate pages like crazy. Like this one - Madonna discography. The main page is mostly text - one of the better-formatted articles for prolific entertainers on wiki -- Barrettmagic 22:05, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

References

The following reference was added to the main entry, so I thought it best to move it here...

• About.com 80's Music Blog

CLW 09:53, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Are we really going to have an article for every song?

I see somebody has wikified all of the individual song titles mentioned in the article, even though the vast majority don't exist (yet). Are we really going to have an article for every song? Really? What exactly are you going to say about them all - surely they'll just end up as stubs, saying something like "Abba song, released xxx", which is largely redundant. The few notable songs, such as Dancing Queen, are already dealt with. To my mind there is almost no merit in this - interested people can easily track down the songs in question and listen to them, and the rest, well, it doesn't matter. So perhaps the idea behind this could be explained, since I for one don't get it. Graham 00:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

So, it seems that's exactly what we are getting. To me, these articles are a pile of poop, and unnecessary. Clearly someone is such an Abba fan that they have decided to do this pointless piece of work, even though it adds almost nothing but noise to the encyclopedia. Why not accept that sometimes, a subject is DONE? Graham 23:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Why, is something the matter? haha

Your tone isn't really that welcoming to the editor who is writing these articles. Personally, I think they're encyclopedic and just fine. Not "noise" at all. No need to get an embolism over it. Mike H. That's hot 05:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Hardly getting "an embolism" over it... I have even fixed up a few of the resulting edits. I still feel they are mostly superfluous, there are really very few singles that are notable. And that's speaking as someone who has always been a fan, on and off... See WP:CRUFT, I thing many of these singles articles are firmly in the cruft category. Still, have whatever articles you want, it's not up to me, only making my feelings known. If that's "unwelcoming" then, meh, whatever. Graham 05:38, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Split of tribute artists, etc

I have been bold and split the tribute artists and samples section out to a new page. I feel that this section was growing too big to be incuded here, bearing in mind that none of this is actually about ABBA themselves. Hopefully this won't be controversial - the standalone article will probably need tidying, since at the mo it's just a cut and paste. Please add any further info in that category to the new page. This doesn't mean Madonna ;-) Graham 03:01, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

1982 or 1983

Have they departed in 1982 or 1983? Both versions can be found in the article. --SyP 18:12, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Their last recording was "the Day Before YoU Came" in autumn of 1982, their last two singles were released in the end of 1982 and their last TV-appearance was in November 1982. Even if they never actually said "ABBA is over", I would say they departed in 1982 because there were no activities as a group in 1983.

ABBAs last recording session was August 20th, 1982 ('The Day Before You Came', released 18th October). They spent most of November 82' promoting this single and the compilation 'ABBA The Singles'. In December they released the last single 'Under Attack', and by this time, Anni-Frid had sold all her shares in their record company and moved to London. In interviews late in '82, they all stated ABBA would continue, but the four members were involved in different projects during 1983, AND was negotiating their recording contracts with their record company Polar. The foursome disagreed with their manager Stig Anderson about their royalty deal, and this held ABBA silent for too long. Both Benny and Björn became fathers with their new wives early in '83, and Agnetha spent early '83 recording a solo album. Anni-Frid stated in interviews again that ABBA would soon come together to record for a future album, but Benny and Björn had their focus on writing music for 'Chess', with recording sessions proper to commence in November '83. No time for ABBA. At the end of 1983, Agnetha did as Anni-Frid, and sold her shares in the record company, and in the following year Björn and Benny followed suit. I'd say they departed in 1983

The last public appearance was 11 December 1982. After that, there were no more recordings, public appearances, or group meetings, until several "reunions" in later years, mostly in private. They may have said in various interviews over the next few years that they intended to continue as ABBA, but for all intents and purposes, the group was over in December 1982.

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:ABBA/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

*Rated B-Level. Almost completely lacks references, and also has a trivia section that needs to be removed. Teemu08 03:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Last edited at 03:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC). Substituted at 20:14, 2 May 2016 (UTC)