ABBA: All the Top 40 Hits

Book excerpt: Before they won the Eurovision Song Contest in April 1974, few people outside Scandinavia had heard of ABBA - indeed, before Waterloo, the quartet were credited as 'Björn Benny & Agnetha Frida' on the few singles they released and on their debut album, as the name ABBA hadn't been coined.Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Frida were all successful musicians in their own right, before they formed a group together, and they continued to enjoy success after ABBA ceased to exist, and the quartet went their separate ways. Incredibly, the four members of ABBA have scored more than a hundred Top 40 singles and eighty Top 40 albums between them over the years, if their pre-ABBA and post-ABBA recordings are taken into account.For the purposes of this book, to qualify as a Top 40 hit, a single or album must have entered the Top 40 singles/albums chart in at least one of nineteen featured countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium (Wallonia), Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland (singles only), Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Zimbabwe. The Top 40 singles and albums are detailed chronologically, according to the date they first entered the chart in one or more of the featured countries. Each Top 40 single and album is illustrated and the catalogue numbers and release dates are detailed, for both Sweden and the UK, followed by the chart runs in each featured country, including any chart re-entries. Where full chart runs are unavailable, peak position and weeks on the chart are given.For both singles and albums, the main listing is followed by 'The Almost Top 40 Singles/Albums', which gives an honorable mention to ABBA and ABBA-related singles/albums that peaked between no.41 and no.50 in one or more countries. There is also a points-based list of the Top 40 ABBA and ABBA-related Singles and Albums, plus a fascinating 'Trivia' section at the end of each section which looks at the most successful ABBA and ABBA-related singles and albums in each of the featured countries.