The song that changed pop history

Abba's Eurovision-winning smash hit failed to impress the critics.

Forty years ago last week, says Fraser Nelson in The Sunday Telegraph, a song was performed in Brighton that "changed the history of pop music". The song was Abba's Waterloo, which launched the career of the world's most successful pop group, the Beatles excepted.

Though never fashionable, they are an extraordinary phenomenon. The albumAbba Gold is now in one often British homes, while the 2008 film, Mamma Mia!, with A-list actors "murdering" two dozen Abba songs, became the highest-grossing musical in Hollywood history.

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