Talk:ABBA

Active or not?

There's a minor edit war going on concerning whether Abba are still active or whether they ceased to be active in 2022. Do we need to reach a consensus on this? Mark and inwardly digest (talk) 13:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed here, as the tussle on this matter is becoming somewhat annoying. This needs to be pinned down. I don't know enough about the matter to have a hard position at this point, though. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 17:27, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

The years active is ridiculous. To say they've been active since 2016 suggests they have had the same activity for the past 8 years as 1974-82. When they recorded the songs for their recent album is irrelevant. They became publicly active in 2021. They were active 1972-82, 2021. Their current 'live' show is not activity ongoing.Tuzapicabit (talk) 22:29, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Cites for these claims would be useful for the discussion. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 22:42, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

"ABBA" is not a plural noun

Throughout this article, "ABBA" is treated as a plural noun. The reason for this, given in a comment, was 'This Article is written in British English, in which pop rock groups take the plural form of the verb; do not change to "was"'.

No. "Pop rock group" is a collective noun. "ABBA were a Swedish pop group" is grammatically inaccurate, and should be changed to "ABBA was a Swedish pop group".

I would like to refer the commenter to this page on group words: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/piece-words-and-group-words MyCatCanBackflip (talk) 08:59, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

BBC, Britannia, Los Angeles Times, Oxford and even Cambridge mostly agree that in British English, the plural verb is for the collective noun IF it is a collection of members. ABBA, most obviously, declares itself as a collection of people, and there are four of them. Now, a record label like Polar Music would be more likely to use "Polar Music is..." rather than "Polar Music are..." as it is a company with likely rotating and varying employees. I'm adept at both American and British English, so it's been a while using the latter. MISTERPITHER (talk) 00:17, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Concerns about this Wikipedia article

This article uses the charting of singles as the main indication of the value of ABBA. Some of the article is unsourced, using a fannish true-believer tone. The New Rolling Stone Record Guide (Random House, 1983, ISBN 0-394-72107-1) gives the group's studio albums two stars (out of five), indicating a "mediocre" rating. I don't agree with this rating, but the article could acknowledge controversies over the group's artistic (as opposed to commercial) success. In addition, the article as a whole treats ABBA primarily as a singles band, limiting commentary on albums to how widely they sold, or produced singles. Covering ABBA's artistic achievement as a studio album band would improve this article. Hifrommike65 (talk) 21:58, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

ABBA, in case anyone isn't aware, minus basically Australia and then some of Sweden / Scandinavia was not popular with critics (and actually, critics in Sweden basically hated ABBA from the start due to Sweden then going through a Swedish Progg phase where music was supposed to be a "Anyone can play" and "not supposed supposed to dress" like they did a la like later punk). TheCorriynial (talk) 00:15, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

ABBA name order

ABBA has stated many times that their name order is first Anni-Frid, then Benny, then Bjorn and Agnetha, in their movie (1977) this is how their name is introduced, when they were asked about their name, this is how they themselves described their name. Lightlylove (talk) 02:00, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Might need some clarity on Documentary section

As the documentary section stands, with a description like "Documentaries often profess to show the "real ABBA" and may employ several methods of legitimising such claims...", this reads like "most ABBA documentaries are unauthorized and uses tactics to sound legit", which seems to conjure a sceptical, likely fan-perspective tone beneath that bold claim, rather than outlining the nuance of ABBA's relationship to documentary movies, and checking which one is with the cooperation of any of the ABBA members or Carl Magnus Palm and which one is not. I will defer to anyone who takes up a challenge to expand it, and then there might be some way to reconcile that section. MISTERPITHER (talk) 18:41, 25 July 2026 (UTC)