Saturday 5 October 2013

February 1978: ABBA, number one sellers in Britain in 1976-77

ABBA has conquered the second global pop market: England. Last year, the quartet that won the Eurovision Song Contest with 'Waterloo' struggled to carry all their profits from the United Kingdom to their own country, Sweden, because the English Treasury prohibited the export of so many millions of pounds, even though they were earned honestly, out of the country. It's a fact that the British people really like the music and the style of ABBA.
In 1976, 'Greatest Hits' was the biggest selling album in England and when 1977 drew to a close recently, ABBA repeated this triumph when 'Arrival' was elected as the biggest album of the year, and still 'Greatest Hits' has remained in the top 5. On top of that, all singles that were released by ABBA in Britain last year have reached number one in the charts.
And so it seems, all of this is still nothing compared with what's going to happen in 1978. The quartet's fifth album 'The Album' has already been released in half the world, but the most important thing is the premiere of their first feature film, 'The Movie' that has been filmed by the prestigious Warner Brothers during their Australian tour in 1977. In January, the film has been released in Sweden with an overwhelming success. This past February, it was heading for London and Warner Spain has scheduled its release in Spain for March or April, provided there won't be a change of plans.
It hasn't happened very often that a festival like the Eurovision Song Contest launched a vocal ensemble whose style is taken from the best beat of the sixties, to the style of the Seekers or the New Seekers.

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