GroUp Entertainment is proud to present Two Rooms Live, a spectacular live theatre / concert experience celebrating legendary songwriting partnerships. In 1966, nineteen year old Benny Andersson met twenty-one year old Björn Ulvaeus, and almost like magic, one of the most prolific songwriting partnerships in music history was born. A collaboration which produced an astounding eight consecutive number-one albums, seventy three singles and 18 number 1 hits for one of the most commercially successful bands of all time; the Swedish super group ABBA.
With sales of over 500 million, Anderson and Ulvaeus, wrote the songs that topped the charts worldwide from 1975 to 1982; including the pop anthems ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Take a Chance on Me’ ‘Knowing Me Knowing You’ and Mama Mia.
After ABBA, Andersson continued writing music with Ulvaeus. Their first project was the stage musical “Chess”, written with Tim Rice. The “Chess” concept album – with vocals by Elaine Paige, Barbara Dickson, Murray Head and Swedes Tommy Körberg and Björn Skifs – was released in October 1984, selling two million copies worldwide. The Paige/Dickson duet “I Know Him So Well” became a Number 1 hit in the UK, and Murray Head’s “One Night in Bangkok” gave Andersson and Ulvaeus a number 3 hit in the U.S.
From their first hits as songwriters in the spring of 1969: “Ljuva Sextital” (a hit with Brita Borg) and “Speleman” which was a major hit for the Hep Stars to Swedish #1 hit with “Lassie” by Ainbusk, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus songs have been recorded by artists such as Nils Landgren Funk Unit, Yngwie Malmsteen, Erasure, Culture Club, Mike Oldfield, Sarah Brightman, Sinéad O’Connor, Meryl Streep, Steps, B*Witched, Hazell Dean, Blancmange, Lush, Sweet Dreams, Chris De Burgh, Nana Mouskouri and Andre Rieu.
ABBA songs are so anthemic, and so ingrained in your system, that you can't really remember when you heard them.
I didn't realise how many Abba songs I knew. But I knew them all. Every single one of them.
It's lovely to be told, 'Your music has given me so much happiness in my life.' Who wouldn't want to hear that?
Abba songs, as anyone who knows knows, are constructed, technically and harmonically, so as to physically imprint the human brain as if biting it with acid, to ensure we will never, ever, ever, be able to forget them.
We have influenced other writers obviously," says Ulvaeus. "With such a string of hits you are bound to influence other people.
Before the Beatles, songwriters were very anonymous people, and nobody paid any attention to them.
Well mostly in song writing my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes.
What you make up in your heads sticks if it's good, falls out if it's bad. If we still remember something a day after we made it up, it might be worth building on.
We simply write the kind of music we enjoy most and hope that our audience will enjoy it too.
It's so humbling and I'm grateful but I cannot say I understand quite how that happened. It's kind of a miracle, never in our wildest dreams did we think that these songs that we wrote would last for such a long time.
There’s a real melancholy in [Abba’s] songs… all the flourishes, like big double octaves on the piano. We stole them like crazy.
We don't want to write political songs. We don't want to turn our records into speeches.
I had a dream and it was fulfilled by meeting with Benny, Bjorn and Agnetha.
I can spot empty flattery and know exactly where I stand. In the end it's really only my own approval or disapproval that means anything.