We already brought you part one of our list of 15 things you probably did not know about ABBA, and now we’re back with part two! Check out eight more fascinating facts about the iconic Swedish pop group that you definitely (probably) did not know below. You might be surprised by what you find out!
Number Eight: They Were More Popular Than the Moon Landing. ABBA did a tv special in 1976 for the market in Australia. Amazingly, their television special was viewed by more people than the moon landing in 1969.
Number Seven: They Could Have Sold Out Royal Albert Hall 580 Times. There are only 12,000 seats in London’s Royal Albert Hall. However, three and a half million people applied to get tickets to their two shows in 1977. The show was scheduled just over a week after they released “Knowing Me, Knowing You.”
Number Six: They Only Allowed Two Artists to Sample Them. Only The Fugees and Madonna have been lucky enough to get away with sampling or covering ABBA. The band members allowed The Fugees to sample “The Name Of The Game” for their single “Rumble In The Jungle,” and they also allowed Madonna to cover “Hung Up.”
Number Five: They Were Serious Party People. Well, sort of. Before they began calling themselves ABBA, the band was called “Festfolk.” In Swedish, “Festfolk” translates to “party people.”
Number Four: The Divorces Had Nothing to Do With Performance Pressure. It’s no secret that at one point, the four members of ABBA had coupled off and gotten married. Though both marriages ended in divorce, the reasons for divorce were not due to the pressure and stress of performing.
Number Three: The Ladies Got Along. Though many people think that ABBA’s two female members didn’t get along, in an interview, Lyngstad said, “Of course we competed, but to good effect.”
Number Two: They Are Responsible for One of the Best-Selling Records of All Time. ABBA’s record titled Gold has sold more copies than The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Adele’s 21.
Number One: They Pledged Not to Reunite. Bjorn Ulvaeus has said that none of the members has any desire to reunite, and because of that, they will never paly together on stage again. They would rather be remembered for their younger and more energetic selves on stage.