Test Your ABBA Basics

These questions challenge your basic knowledge of ABBA. The answers are found below.
1. Name the hit musical that premiered in London and ended up on Broadway and is based around ABBA and this 1974 hit.
a. “Waterloo”
b. “SOS”
c. “Mamma Mia”
d. “Take A Chance On Me”
2. Name two current pop bands that helped generate the revival of ABBA’s popularity in the 1990s.
a. REM
b. Erasure
c. The Spice Girls
d. U2
3. What does ABBA mean and where are they from?
4. What year did ABBA form?
a. 1975
b. 1969
c. 1970
d. 1966
5. What was the first name of the band?
6. Besides the big melodies and pop structures, what else was special about this quartet?
7. When did ABBA first tour the U.S.?
a. 1975
b. 1980
c. 1978
d. Never
8. How did ABBA become famous?
9. Name that first hit ...
10. The year 1977 was a big year for ABBA. Why?
Answers
1. C. “Mamma Mia”
2. B and D. U2 made the song “Dancing Queen” a regular part of the Zoo TV World Tour. The band Erasure recorded an ABBA cover album called “ABBA-esque.”
3. It is an acronym for the first letters of each primary member’s name: Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog.
The band hails from Sweden.
4. C. Although the group began with various combinations of members, the group got its start officially in 1970. The true beginnings date back to 1966 with Ulvaeus and Andersson first met.
5. Festfolk (which means “party people.”)
6. The group was actually made up of two couples: Faltskog and Ulvaeus married in 1971, and Lyngstad and Andersson married in 1978 after years of dating. Both couples had divorced by 1981.
7. C. The band began a major promotional campaign beginning in the spring of 1978. The group played its last series of concerts in Japan in March of 1980.
8. The group had its first success on the charts after winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 with a song that would later become a hit.
9. “Waterloo.”
10. The band released both “ABBA: The Movie,” and “ABBA: The Album.”
Source: Learn The Ways of ABBA