Melancholy Undercover: The Book of ABBA

Jan Gradvall in conversation with Daniel Dylan Wray

In the history of pop culture and music there has never been a group like ABBA.  Since interviewing the four members of ABBA in 2013 – at a time when the band had not been interviewed for 30 years – a relationship was sparked and music journalist Jan Gradvall was granted unique access for the next decade. He has interviewed each of them exclusively for Melancholy Undercover and they share their thoughts and opinions more openly than ever before.  Jan reveals the socio-cultural context of how the band’s sound was formed and shows how the story of ABBA is also the story of Sweden and the internationalisation of pop culture.  This remarkably intimate, approved biography brings us a few steps closer to one of the world’s most famously private bands.

Award winning writer Jan Gradvall is one of Sweden’s most respected music journalists. He won the Swedish Publicists’ Association’s Grand Prize in 2013 for “his perfect pitch when depicting everything that makes life interesting”. He has a uniquely close journalistic relationship with ABBA and has appeared in two BBC documentaries, The Joy of ABBA and Flatpack Pop about the Swedish song writing phenomenon.

‘Even the happier songs are melancholy at their core. What we did was melancholy, undercover.’ Benny Andersson

Daniel Dylan Wray is an arts journalist, writing about music, film, television, books and culture for publications such as: the Guardian, VICE, Pitchfork, Uncut and Bandcamp.

The event will be followed by a fun ABBA and Eurovision Song Contest music quiz.