ABBA blog

What a year it’s been! I feel most years are quite hectic for me, but this one was particularly full, it seems: one new book published, an older title revised and republished, and a whole host of media appearances in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Waterloo – these are just some of the many things that I was involved in this year.

ABBA ON RECORD

The year started with me and designer Maria Nicholas scrambling furiously to get the long in the making book ABBA On Record off to the printers. A project that was meant to take two years, at the most, took five years, but finally, towards the end of January, we were able to deliver the files to the printers, and about a month later the books were transported to my distributor in the town of Falun.

I spent the first week of March at the distributor’s facilities, signing 1,500 books that had been pre-ordered, doing on average of 300 per day. All went smoothly, except for one of those “this is the one thing that simply mustn’t happen right now” accidents: someone had placed a box where it shouldn’t be and so I stumbled on it and fell, spraining my right hand. Yes, I am right-handed, so there was a bit of worry as to how I was going to see the signing through. When it happened I had signed 900 books, with 600 to go. Fortunately, I could do most of the things I needed to do as part of the signing – unpacking boxes, lifting books, etc. – with my left hand, and the right hand was in good enough shape that I could sign the remaining books. Whew!

After the signing was finished, my distributor could begin sending out all the books, and I am pleased to say that the reception exceeded anything I had dared hope for. The reader reactions have been phenomenal, and the reviews were excellent too. I am also proud that ABBA On Record featured in no less than two end-of-year lists as one of the best music books of the year. Finishing the book almost broke me, but in terms of quality it was clearly worth the effort. I am very proud of ABBA On Record and there is almost nothing I would like to change in it, which is rare for me.

By the way, I have just, finally, published the Notes to the book. So, if you're like me and enjoy looking up the sources for the quotes in the book, there is a PDF available for your perusal.

WATERLOO 50TH ANNIVERSARY

I certainly hadn’t planned it this way, but ABBA On Record was published just a few weeks before the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s Eurovision Song Contest victory with Waterloo on 6 April 1974. This meant that not only were there interviews and such connected to ABBA On Record, but also a lot of media who wanted me to appear in television and radio documentaries, culture radio programmes, print media, and so on. The recording of some of that stuff ran parallel with finishing ABBA On Record early in the year and then all the way into May, with, naturally, a peak in April. Counting book excerpts published in magazines and such, I appeared in some kind of media more than 30 times from the end of December 2023 until mid-May.

For someone who’s used to quietly pottering about at home, sitting behind the computer, maybe occasionally visiting archives for research or going to interview someone, this was quite a hectic period, to say the least. For some reason, the memory that stands out to me was arriving home on a Friday evening after signing those 1,500 ABBA On Record books, getting up early Saturday morning to invite a French television crew into my home, and then dashing off to the Stockholm suburbs to give an ABBA lecture. It’s not how I usually live my life.

The media activities are all listed on my website, although quite a few of the links will be dead now.

BRIGHT LIGHTS DARK SHADOWS – THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF ABBA

I had barely closed the door on the most intense period following ABBA On Record and the Waterloo anniversary before I had to get to grips with the revised version of Bright Lights Dark Shadows, my mammoth ABBA biography, first published in 2001 and never out of print since then. There are many great ABBA books out there, but this is the one that people go to if they’re really interested in learning about the ABBA story from every angle and with all the pertinent details. Given the book’s importance, it’s equally important for me that it is revised and updated on a regular basis.

That’s my perspective as an author and an ABBA fan, but for a publisher it has to make commercial sense to revise and update the book, as they will have to make a certain financial investment to prepare such a revision. I guess it’s a testament to the status of Bright Lights Dark Shadows that Omnibus Press have felt that it was worthwhile to update it every now and then, even though it’s a catalogue title that’s not flying off the shelves in the way a brand new book will do. Nevertheless, I am grateful to them for giving this latest revision the go-ahead. I spent the best part of the period of mid-April to mid-June working on the updates and revisions. And just now, in December 2024, it has been reviewed together with Jan Gradvall's more recent ABBA book Melancholy Undercover in the prestigious London Review of Books, somehow proving my point: it makes sense to revise and update this book.

After signing and then preparing the shipping of 1,500 copies of ABBA On Record, I didn’t feel much like signing and shipping any copies of Bright Lights Dark Shadows. But I was aware that a certain number of people would like a signed copy, so I came up with the idea of asking an independent bookshop here in Stockholm, The English Bookshop, if they were up to handling all the logistics, and they said yes. I believe I told them they could expect orders of about 100 or, at the most, 150 copies – but once all the orders had come in they numbered 324. With so many copies to sign, we decided it would be better if I came to their main store in Uppsala to do the signing, which I did on two occasions in October and November. Never say I don’t go the extra mile for ABBA fans!

SUMMER

For the first time in many years I had the whole month of July off work, without a project that needed to be finished hanging over my head – and it felt great! My friend, fellow ABBA fan Ian Cole and his husband, also named Ian, came to Stockholm for a week in June, and it was great to hang out with them. They made a brief return visit in July before heading back to Australia, so I got to see them twice.

Otherwise, I was determined not to travel anywhere myself. I was completely exhausted after working virtually 365 days a year for five years writing ABBA On Record and never being able to relax completely. I wanted to remain in Stockholm and just let every day become whatever it became. I was blessed with nice weather, so I did a lot of walking, which I do anyway, but according to Google I walked 181 kilometres in July alone – that’s about 112 miles. By comparison, I travelled on public transport for 100 kilometres during the same period.

A fun project during that month, to give my walks a purpose, was to visit as many Stockholm churches as possible. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for many years, but now I finally got around to doing it. All it required was a bit of preparation and, fortunately, the Church of Sweden has a very good website with detailed information about its Stockholm churches, so I knew what to look for once I got there. I’m not religious, but churches are part of our shared cultural heritage and many of them are quite beautiful. I visited a total of 17 churches, many of which I had never been to before – or if I had, it was many years ago – and gained a number of insights. For one thing, I was surprised that so many of them were built relatively recently, in the early 20th century. I really enjoyed these excursions and am looking forward to continue my exploration next summer.

The rest of my time off I watched a lot of movies, saw friends and generally tried to relax as much as possible. I’m pleased to say I had a very good summer.

LECTURES: ABBA AND THE BEATLES

Back in 2016, I began giving lectures about ABBA. It went quite well, but for various reasons it sort of fizzled out after a couple of years, and then the pandemic happened. But this year I started again, and I have now expanded my repertoire to include Beatles lectures. I’ve given a total of 22 lectures this year, mostly for senior citizen groups, and I really enjoy it. I sometimes have a feeling that I haven’t changed a bit since I was younger but clearly, for someone who always used to blush when addressing class in school, or who was so nervous before his first live television appearance (in 1994) that he didn’t sleep a wink the night before, something must have changed. I now have no problem at all appearing on television or talking to an audience, and I’ve come to realise that I’m pretty good at it too.

It’s also fun, because when you write a book it will mostly take a couple of years – or, in my case, five! – before you get the feedback. Giving a lecture you get out of the house, so to speak, meet a group of people who are, for the most part, interested in hearing what you have to say, and you get an immediate audience reaction.

For 2025, I have expanded my repertoire again, to include a lecture about Monica Zetterlund, the Swedish jazz singer who was the subject of my first book (co-written with Thomas Winberg). I have plans to offer further subjects in the future.

I have basically only lectured once outside Sweden, in 2018 when I gave a handful of lectures at Missouri Southern State University in the United States. I would love to give talks about ABBA abroad, but so far, despite some attempts to make things happen, it hasn’t resulted in anything. If anyone reading this has any leads for anything of that kind in the English-speaking countries, I’d be very interested to hear from you.

OTHER ABBA STUFF

In addition to publishing two books, giving lectures and appearing in the media quite a lot, there were a few other ABBA-related activities during the year. I was honoured to contribute an essay about the Arrival album upon its induction the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in the United States, and I was also interviewed for a couple of books: The Minimoog Book and ABBA – The Making of An Unstoppable Musical Phenomenon. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I appeared live at Australia’s Abba Day Down Under 2024, and also participated in an online broadcast from ABBA The Museum under the Make Music Matter! banner.

SO, WHAT’S UP IN 2025?

As always, I have a number of ABBA projects in the pipeline, and at least two of those look likely to be happen in 2025. I also hope to find time to put together the promised free chapters that I had to remove from ABBA On Record for space reasons. These chapters were never written, so there’s quite a lot of work to be done on them, and I simply haven’t had the time to get to grips with it until very recently. As you may imagine, spending five years writing a book on a two-year budget doesn’t really add up, plus there were many important things that I didn’t have time to deal with during those five years. Suffice it to say that if I don’t attend to these other things first, there won’t be any Carl Magnus Palm left to put together those additional chapters. Thank you so much for your patience.

ADVENT CALENDAR

As I’m typing this, it’s less than a week to Christmas, and as has been my wont since 2012 (except for two years when I didn’t have the time) I have been publishing my daily musical Advent Calendar. It’s something I enjoy doing just for fun – and it does have a small but dedicated following!

Thank you for reading this personal 2024 review. I hope you enjoyed it, and I wish you all the best for the holiday season and the New Year!