ABBA: The Band That Needed Permission for Its Own Name

ABBA's international career started with a single contest win most casual fans barely think about anymore.

Before that, the band didn't even fully own the name people now know by heart.

A fish company got there first.

And one of the group's biggest mid-decade hits was written about a breakup that hadn't actually happened yet.

Here's the real chain of events behind the group most people think they already know everything about.

ABBA arriving in Rotterdam in 1979, near the end of the decade that made them international stars

ABBA, Rotterdam, October 1979. Image credit: Photo by Fernando Pereira / Anefo, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Contest That Actually Launched ABBA

The band's real international story starts on a single night in April 1974.

The group entered the Eurovision Song Contest, held that year in Brighton, England.

Their entry was a song called Waterloo.

It won.

That victory made Sweden a Eurovision winner for the first time ever.

Before Brighton, the group had almost no profile outside Scandinavia.

Waterloo wasn't even their first attempt at reaching Eurovision.

A year earlier, the group entered Sweden's national selection with a song called Ring Ring.

They came in third and missed the contest entirely.

Ring Ring still became a #1 hit in Sweden and a real success across several other European countries.

That near-miss convinced the group to try again the following year.

Their second attempt won Sweden's national selection by a landslide, more than 90 points ahead of the runner-up.

That same song went on to win the actual Eurovision final in Brighton a few weeks later.

Within months, Waterloo was climbing charts across Europe.

It reached #6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 later that year, the group's first real American chart entry.

One three-minute performance changed the entire trajectory of the band's career.

Without that specific contest, there may not have been a Dancing Queen, a Mamma Mia, or any of what followed.

The Name They Had to Ask Permission to Use

The name ABBA itself has a surprisingly practical origin.

Manager Stig Anderson had been in the music business since 1963, when he co-founded the Swedish label Polar Music.

Bjorn Ulvaeus was already signed to that label with an earlier group before ABBA existed.

Anderson later brought Benny Andersson in as a label partner too, well before the four singers ever formed a band together.

Once they did, Anderson built the group's new name from the first letters of each member's first name.

Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, and Anni-Frid became ABBA in 1973.

It was short, easy to pronounce in any language, and easy to remember.

There was just one real complication.

A Swedish company had already been using that exact name since 1838.

Abba was a seafood cannery, well known across Sweden for its tinned herring.

The band's team had to actually negotiate with the company for rights to the name.

The cannery agreed without much fuss.

According to the story, they simply asked the band not to embarrass them.

No lawsuits, no drawn-out legal fight, just a handshake-level agreement between a pop group and a fish company.

The Song That Predicted Its Own Band's Breakup

By 1976, two real marriages sat inside the group.

Bjorn Ulvaeus was married to Agnetha Faltskog.

Benny Andersson was married to Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

That year, the band recorded a song called Knowing Me, Knowing You.

It's a song about a relationship quietly falling apart.

The single came out in February 1977.

At the time, neither ABBA couple had actually divorced yet.

Bjorn Ulvaeus has said directly that he wrote it before his own marriage ended.

His divorce from Agnetha came two years later, in 1979.

The song wasn't documenting a breakup that already happened.

It was picking up on real strain the band was already living through, months before either marriage actually ended.

Curious how the group's other big single from this same stretch actually came together?

Read the full story in Dancing Queen: The Song ABBA Played for a King First.

That single arrived the same year this one did, born out of a very different kind of night entirely.

How ABBA Actually Performed on the US Charts

The group's American chart run built steadily across the second half of the decade.

Waterloo opened the door in 1974, reaching #6.

Dancing Queen became the group's only US #1, hitting the top in April 1977.

Knowing Me, Knowing You reached #14 on the Hot 100 in 1977.

Take a Chance on Me climbed all the way to #3 the following year.

The Name of the Game reached #12, keeping the streak going into 1978.

Four different singles inside three years, all landing comfortably inside the Top 15.

None of those hits matched Dancing Queen's peak position, but together they kept ABBA a consistent presence on American radio.

That's a real accomplishment for a Swedish group singing in a second language for most of its US audience.

Want to test how well you actually know acts like this one?

Try the 70s Music Trivia Quiz.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did ABBA actually break through internationally?

ABBA broke through by winning the Eurovision Song Contest on April 6, 1974, in Brighton, England, with the song Waterloo.

It was Sweden's first-ever Eurovision win.

The victory gave the band instant exposure across Europe and helped push Waterloo to #6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 that same year.

Where does the band name ABBA actually come from?

ABBA is an acronym built from the first letters of each member's first name: Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, and Anni-Frid.

Manager Stig Anderson settled on it in 1973 to give the group a name that was short and easy for international audiences to say and remember.

Did ABBA really need permission to use their own name?

The band really did need permission, since they weren't the first to use that name.

A Swedish seafood company called Abba had been canning fish under that exact name since 1838.

The band's team negotiated with the company for the rights to use it, and the canners agreed, reportedly joking that it was fine as long as the group didn't embarrass them.

Is Knowing Me, Knowing You really about the band members' own divorces?

Knowing Me, Knowing You was written and released in early 1977, before either couple in the band actually divorced.

Bjorn Ulvaeus has said the song came before his own split from Agnetha, which happened in 1979.

The song foreshadowed the real strain both couples were already feeling rather than describing a divorce that had already happened.

How did ABBA actually perform on the US charts in the 70s?

Waterloo reached #6 on the Hot 100 in 1974, ABBA's first US chart entry.

Dancing Queen became their only US #1 in 1977.

Knowing Me, Knowing You and Take a Chance on Me both reached the US Top 40 as well, keeping the group on American radio through the second half of the decade.