Press Release

Bright Lights, Dark Shadows: The Real Story Of ABBA

Author: Carl Magnus Palm

This new biography is an amazingly detailed account of the people who were Abba, revealing their individual backgrounds, family histories, musical influences and personal demons.

By the time Abba split up, no one was in any doubt that behind the glitter there was a dark side, and behind the smiling group were four troubled individuals. But even as a whole new generation of fans discover Abba's great music through the albums and the hit show Mamma Mia, Anni-Frid, Agnetha, Benny and Björn have continued to remain rather shadowy, secretive figures.

Their marriages, personal break-ups and superficial biographical details are well known …but who exactly were Abba?

* How did Norwegian Anni-Frid become a real-life princess? * How did folksy Benny and Björn reinvent themselves as an international pop force to rival Lennon & McCartney? * Just how influential was the Abba's "fifth" member, Stig Anderson? * And what actually happened to blonde Agnetha who often smiled but never really looked happy?

The author answers these and many more questions about the hit group that no one took seriously… until everyone did.

Despite their beautiful voices, Anni-Frid and Agnetha were surely fated to be strictly domestic singing successes. And despite their musical enthusiasm, surely unhip Benny and Björn were destined to remain semi-pros, essentially pub players with a second-hand folk/country/pop repertoire?

It is to Carl Magnus Palm's great credit that he successfully unravels the complex story of how Abba built themselves into a supremely talented musical force in pop; in the process he fully exposes the Svengali-like influence of Stig Anderson, carefully analyses all of their musical influences and reveals what happened to the vast fortune they made.

No one but a Swede could have written the definitive story of Abba's four members; certainly to most outsiders it sounds like an unlikely history. Each page is a revelation and Palm's acute understanding of the culture of his native Sweden makes these personal stories understandable in a unique way.

This book also contains the first real three-dimensional portraits of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. Their personal histories are sometimes shown as being as dark and tragic as anything from a Bergman movie. But Bergman movies never had a soundtrack by Abba, and the sheer ebullience of their enduringly popular music is also celebrated in a book that is surely destined to become one of the all-time classic pop biographies.