A Song Called Boogaloo

On August 4, 1975, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson walked into Glen Studios in Stockholm with three unfinished songs. They had melodies, placeholder titles, and nonsense words where the lyrics should be. One of them was a dance track they were calling “Boogaloo.” When the backing track was done, Benny took it home and played it for Frida, and she started to cry.

“Boogaloo” became “Dancing Queen.” It is ABBA's only US No. 1 and its only million-selling single in Britain. Fifty years later, it is also the song most likely to get your aunt onto the dance floor at a wedding.

The Eurovision Problem

ABBA came out of Swedish pop's mainstream. Björn had sung with the Hootenanny Singers, a popular folk group. Benny had played keyboards in the Hep Stars, Sweden's biggest band of the 1960s. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were both solo singers before the four joined up.

In April 1974 they won the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton with “Waterloo.” It was a hit all over Europe. It was also a trap. According to the band's official history, the “stigma” of being Eurovision winners “made it difficult for ABBA to be taken seriously.”

The British singles that followed “Waterloo” stalled at No. 32 and No. 38, and one didn't chart at all. ABBA risked being remembered as a song-contest act. They needed a record that sounded like it belonged on the radio next to the Americans.

Two American Records

So they borrowed from two. The first was George McCrae's “Rock Your Baby,” one of the earliest disco hits. The band had heard it many times at Alexandra, a Stockholm nightclub. The second was the loose New Orleans rhythm of Dr. John's 1972 album Gumbo, a favourite of session drummer Roger Palm and engineer Michael B. Tretow.

What came out the other side didn't sound American at all. The Swedish journalist Jan Gradvall, in his authorised biography of the group, pinned down why.

"These two templates were American. But when Abba plays disco there is an unmistakably European sound to it. The song opens with Benny running his finger over the keys on the Bolin grand piano, then the song starts – and it is always slower than you remember."

Björn and Benny knew it the night they finished the backing track. Both went home to play it for their partners. “I cried when I heard it,” Frida told Gradvall. “I thought it was so incredibly beautiful.” Agnetha was asleep, and Björn didn't want to wake her. So he went to his sister's house instead. “I played it for her over and over,” he said.

Five Months on the Shelf

The band's manager, Stig Anderson, came up with the title and wrote the lyrics with Björn. Agnetha and Frida recorded their vocals in September 1975, and the mix was still being fine-tuned in December. “It's hard to tell when a hit is being made, you don't always sense it,” Agnetha said later. “‘Dancing Queen’ was an exception, we knew immediately it was going to be massive.”

That is exactly why it sat on a shelf. “Fernando” was finished around the same time, and Anderson wanted that ballad out first, in March 1976, as a contrast to the uptempo “Mamma Mia.” “Dancing Queen” waited another five months.

By then, ABBA's British luck had turned. “SOS” had made the Top 10, and “Mamma Mia” and “Fernando” had both reached No. 1. The band had a hit record they were sure of and an audience that was finally ready for it.

A Royal Wedding It Wasn't Written For

The song's first public performance was its strangest. On June 18, 1976, Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf was to marry Silvia Sommerlath the next day. A televised all-star gala at the Royal Swedish Opera was held in their honour. ABBA came on in baroque costumes and powdered-wig finery, worn with a wink, and sang “Dancing Queen” to a future queen.

Everyone watching assumed it had been written for her. It hadn't. The track had been recorded the previous August, before anyone knew there would be a royal wedding to play it at. The band were careful to say so. But the story stuck, and the song started its life attached to a wedding.

“Dancing Queen” was released on August 16, 1976. In Britain it went to No. 1 on September 4 and stayed there for six weeks. In April 1977 it reached No. 1 in the United States, the only time ABBA ever topped the American chart.

Still on the Playlist

The song spread in ways ABBA couldn't have planned. Elvis Costello said he borrowed Benny's grand-piano style from it for “Oliver's Army,” one of his biggest hits. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015. According to the Official Charts Company, it is ABBA's only million-seller in Britain, with 1.56 million sales and close to 100 million streams.

Its real home turned out to be the wedding reception. In a 2022 poll of 2,000 wedding guests about the songs that got them dancing, “Dancing Queen” came first, ahead of Queen's “Don't Stop Me Now.” A scrape of 100,000 wedding-themed Spotify playlists found it on 5,770 of them.

Part of the appeal may be that it is slower than you remember. That is the European half of Gradvall's formula, and it leaves room for people who don't normally dance. In 2024, at a televised ABBA tribute, the King and Queen of Sweden were in the audience, clapping along as “Dancing Queen” played again. It was nearly half a century after they first heard it at their own wedding gala.