When was ABBA discovered?

Answer 1

You could say most of the world "discovered" them in 1974, after they won the Eurovision Song Contest and scored a number one hit worldwide with "Waterloo". But ABBA was not really discovered by anyone. All four principal members were successful musicians in their own right before coming together as a group:

• Benny Andersson was keyboardist for Sweden's top rock band and Bjorn Ulvaeus was singer for the country's top folk band when they met in 1966 and started writing and playing together. Both were proteges of legendary Stockholm producer Stig Anderson.

• Agnetha Faltskog was one of Sweden's best female solo artists, discovered by Karl Gerhard Lundkvist from Cupol Records in 1968.
• Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad had been singing with jazz and pop bands since her early teens.

The guys met and fell in love with the girls in 1969 and they performed together for the first time in 1970, releasing their first single and album as a group in 1972, both of which became number one sellers in Sweden and achieved airplay in the US, UK and other countries. (They actually didn't take the name ABBA until a few months later.) From the outset they continued to work with Stig Anderson and his Polar label so their success was pretty organic.