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On the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s legendry Eurovision win, this feature explores the group’s music from the inside out - their phenomenal songwriting skill, approach to melody and vocal harmony, the structure of their songs, their pioneering mixing and recording.

From Benny and Bjorn composing from piano on the tiny island of Viggsö in the Swedish archipelago to the myriad of ways in which the vocals of Agnetha (a soprano) and Frida (a mezzo) are blended together in the studio, ABBA’s writing, singing and production is opened up to illuminate their entire sound world.

ABBA - Inside the Music follows the evolution of their craft across all eight studio albums before the band separated, from the Schlager influenced folk of Ring Ring (1973) to the electronic soundscapes of The Visitors (1981) – a huge musical transformation worthy of comparison to The Beatles. Along the way, the group experimented with genres as diverse as reggae, glam rock, prog rock, disco and latterly musical theatre. But behind all of it is their signature, Nordic blend of melancholy and euphoria, the two moods – minor and major - running together across the whole of ABBA’s output.

The group weren’t always as beloved as they are today. ABBA faced huge derision from the serious music press both at home and abroad, which accused them of ignoring politics and disengaging pop music from the counter-culture. "We have met the enemy and they are them," wrote one critic for Rolling Stone. But even their fiercest opponents acknowledged ABBA’s compositional skill and the special dynamic of Frida and Agnetha’s vocals.

Hearing from songwriters, producers, composers, singers and critics, this programme goes inside ABBA’s score in search of their craft and their musical art.

Multiple Ivor Novello winner and Grammy-nominated songwriter Iain Archer presents.

Featuring music writers Jan Gradvall and Paul Morley, ABBA’s live concert engineer Claes af Geijerstam, singer and broadcaster Catherine Bott, jazz critic and author Kevin Le Gendre, songwriter Guy Chambers, classical singer Anne Sofie von Otter, ABBA historian Carl Magnus Palm, director of The Ivors Academy Tom Gray, composer and conductor Leo Geyer, singer songwriters Annika Kilkenny and Connie Talbot, author and artistic associate at the South Bank Gillian Moore and Dan Gillespie Sells, lead singer of The Feeling and composer of the musical ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’.

Producer and piano (except when it's Benny): Simon Hollis
Guitar: Iain Archer

A Brook Lapping production for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 4

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