Eighteen years after they last performed together, ABBA remain one of the world's biggest selling groups with one of the strongest catalogues in the history of popular music. As a group ABBA were active between 1972 - 1982 and broke sales records during that period. This biography offers a thorough, warts-and-all account, covering all aspects of the ABBA members' lives and careers: the period before the group came together, the amazing success story fo the Seventies, their marriage and divorces, the ups and downs of their empire and their careers after the group. The bulk of the book focuses on the ABBA years, but as the story of the group and its members develop, the book takes a look at the group's musical development, offering a critique of the group's songs in terms of European tradition. Similarly the ABBA story can be related in the context of Swedish history and culture.