The music of ABBA is not that happy. It might sound happy, in some strange way, but deep within, it's not happy music. It has that Nordic melancholic feeling to it. What fools you is the girls' voices. You know, I do think that is one of the secrets about ABBA. Even when we were really quite sad, we always sounded jubilant.
In a way, I'm kind of a bystander looking at this phenomenon that is ABBA, which is still around, and that I thought would be finished in 1981 and forgotten. I'm amazed how this could happen, and I don't know why it happened. I'm just grateful and humble. I just sit back and enjoy.
I want people to remember ABBA as we were. I don't think that four geriatrics wheeled on stage is what we should leave as our legacy.
I promise you, ABBA will never reform - I couldn't bear the stress of disappointing everyone.
In the beginning of my career, I wanted to be chased by girls more than anything - that's why I got the guitar. By the time we were in ABBA, the music was the only important thing.
Critics used to say that ABBA were formulaic or that our songs were rubbish. We never had time for those comments, though. We were sincere and devoted to what we did.
Of course, we wore silly outfits, the pictures were corny, and some people still focus on that. But ABBA wasn't a big intellectual thing. We were a pop group.
Sweden is an open, liberal, secular and democratic country. We strive towards achieving equality; we are forward-looking and refuse to be pulled back by social constructs such as religion.
If that doomsday scenario happens, will it help if you have heaps of paper money? I don't think so.
All these years later, I have almost no memory of the shows themselves. It's a blur. I remember my jogging runs better - that was my way of getting my energy together. I used to try to get to the arena as late as possible; otherwise, I'd just be pacing around, waiting to go on.
My concern is to keep religion and the state separated. I don't think that religion and politics go together. When you see political decisions colored by religion, decisions that affect us all... I thought: 'I do not want to go back to medieval times.'
Cultural variety is always worth striving for, but must never precede the declaration of human rights.
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.
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. But the urge to write is something you have to have. A conviction, an ambition to write and never stop until you think, 'This is the best I can do.'
Wild horses couldn't drag me away from a summer on the Stockholm archipelago.
