Celebrating ABBA's Eurovision win: 50 Years Later

Picture this, it's 1974 – a year filled with landmark pop culture moments. Queen were on a roll with their second and third killer albums, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman were going head to head in The Rumble in the Jungle, and in the coastal university town of Brighton, a little known group from Sweden called ABBA won the 19th the Eurovision Song Contest.

While the winner of this song contest is given more opportunities in the industry, it's not necessarily a ticket to the top of the charts. But in the case of the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, however, the win in the Brighton Dome catapulted ABBA to global superstardom in a few short years and showed the world that the winner takes it all.

If you’re learning piano and ready for some inspiration, this article will serve to celebrate ABBA’s catalog, the anniversary of their win in April 1974, and briefly preview the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest coming up between May 7th-11th in the hosting country, Malmo, Sweden.

The lasting impact of one track

"Waterloo" was ABBA's Eurovision-winning performance in 1974. That year, the Swedish pop group released a 14-track record of the same name. Following the win, ABBA went on to release the many world-famous hits we know them for today, until calling it quits in 1983.

The four members were Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, whose story outside of creating countless hits included instances of dating one another. As can happen, the end of the romantic relationships within the group also put an end to their performances. Still, ABBA gave us as fans a short run of timeless musical contributions, including "Waterloo", "Super Trouper", and seven other recorded studio albums.

"Mamma Mia" was elevated to heightened popularity due to the Hollywood film, a trend we've seen in pop music over and over again, such as Billie Eilish's hit in the Barbie movie. The Eurovision win was only the beginning of a band who would completely define pop heading towards the turn of a century.

They also undertook numerous re-recordings of "Waterloo" sung in their native language Swedish, German and more. This is quite striking to think about today; it would be like Bad Bunny translating his music to French, or witnessing Taylor Swift sing in Arabic. The effort put in, as well as the skills of the performers and ability for the languages to work with the same musical accompaniment, is fascinating as a fan.

💡 Did you know? ABBA’s discography is quite useful for non-native English speakers as a tool for learning the language! This is because not only of the lyrics themselves, but the delivery.

As AllMusic puts it in their review, the record "is rather unusual in the group's output for the fact that the guys are still featured fairly prominently in some of the vocals, and for the variety of sounds – including reggae, folk-rock, and hard rock – embraced by its songs." If interested, AllMusic also offers a similar albums feature! Like what you might know from streaming, this is quite the fun way to discover new albums rather than single song recommendations! Give it a try for listening or playing along on the piano.

A brief history of the Eurovision Song Contest

Now that the Oscars and Grammys are behind us, fanatics for popular music have fully shifted focus to Eurovision. This annual event brings together representatives from multiple European countries, generally soloists singing or a small band, and determine a winner based on a voting system. It’s taken some years, but this cornerstone of European music culture has slowly become a beloved event for American audiences too.

The Eurovision Song Contest and each future host country can partially thank the 2020 film The Story of Fire Saga for this growth in audience. The comedy film seemed to turn the idea of the Eurovision event on its head, as for many years Americans viewed the competition as not really made for them, with cheesy music relying on old pop tricks. But Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams’ hilarious portrayal of an amateur duo thrust into the spotlight has created a new way for Americans to connect to the actual contest.

To get a sense of what the songs sound like, YouTuber Steve Rosenberg put together a brilliant piano cover of the winners from 1956-2017. Check it out starting with ABBA’s track here!

Why learning pop music fuels fast piano learning

As a genre, pop claims its name through a formulaic approach. Songwriters attempt to understand what the masses listen to. They write with the purpose of creating what can be our favourite song of the summer blasting at every bar, restaurant, retail store and so on. This differs from what we might hear from artists outside of pop who don’t write for success, they just write, and find success.

Eurovision is ultimately a contest for pop music, and ABBA were considered to have completely redefined what pop was in the 70s and 80s. But what if you decide you don’t like pop? Does that mean the music is unavailable as a learning tool?

It shouldn’t be! VOX podcast Switched on Pop, which have featured ABBA in the past, stand as the perfect middle ground between pop and music theory. Even basic songs can hold immense emotional power and subtle songwriting genius, and learning them on piano can help us unlock those secrets.

So if you are considering tuning in, but unsure if it will be too poppy for you, give it a chance! And keep your LUMI Keys next to you – more on how to approach that below.

2024 Eurovision preview

While there have been rumors swirling of an ABBA reunion for the awards, such an event remains unlikely. Much like Pink Floyd or other stars with messy breakups, it’s a rare occurrence to see the four members of ABBA together, let alone performing on stage.

We are still in for some great music, though, and some of us might even find our new favourite song. Night one of Eurovision 2024 will feature 15 performances, and 16 on night two. The final night will present the best 20, or 10 from each semi-final, for the title. The favorites to take home 1st place are Switzerland, Croatia, Netherlands and Italy; each has over a 10% chance, and just like in the Hollywood film, Iceland are considered quite the underdogs for even a top 5 finish.

This year’s youngest contestant, Silia Kapsis from Cyprus, gave us a gift in the form of this piano-driven preview of her voice mere days before the competition. Whether or not this is foreshadowing the instrumentation that’ll be used in the competition, it gives a good sense of how Eurovision songs often treat backing musicians; relatively minimal, to make the most space for voice, dance, and overall stage visuals.

While Steve’s video above is fun, we won’t hear much of that televised. Eurovision as a contest for songwriting, it’s bound to feel and sound different than the American award shows which preceded it in 2024. Though if you just haven’t heard enough piano this week, here’s an all-piano preview. Talk about goals for learning the piano!

Tips for watching and improving your piano skills

We’ve established that any live instruments will be complementary to the vocalist. Though if there is a piano, the likelihood is that it won’t be very advanced in style. This is good news for piano learners!

A great way to train both your hands and ears is to try and learn songs just by listening to them. So this year, we highly recommend watching the Eurovision Song Contest with your LUMI Keys nearby. If there’s a pianist on stage, try and follow their hands when the camera allows. Can you begin to find a few correct notes? Maybe a full chord or two, or even figure out the key of the song?

Even when there is no piano present, your LUMI holds a key to the musical world. Try to figure out the basic melodies and harmonies as the vocalists perform. What do you like about the rhythm? Did you discover a few notes played after one another (their "intervals") that you really enjoyed? Bonus points if you become so inspired, you put together the beginnings of your first song.

Learning ABBA songs with LUMI

If you’re already learning with LUMI, you may have seen that a number of ABBA’S top hits are available to learn with the LUMI App! 4 songs to be specific, which are:

🌟 Dancing Queen

🌟 Lay All Your Love on Me

🌟 Mamma Mia

🌟 Thank You for the Music

Most of these are available to play in multiple different difficulty levels – so whether you’re taking your very first steps or in the advanced stages of learning, ABBA's music can help you continue on that path.

Take the famous theme from the film Mamma Mia, which is one of the best tracks to start with as beginners. The melody of this song features a lot of repeated notes, and only a few accidentals. This can help you learn some rhythmic and hand positioning basics without becoming too complicated right away.

The notation here is called the Cascade View. It’s the first step in graduating to traditional sheet notation – in due time.

One song to take on when you’ve begun that leveling up would be the megahit "Dancing Queen." Have a look at this song in one of the next notation views:

With this view, we as learners get to experience a left-to-right motion of reading music, inching us closer to the ever-intimidating idea of sight reading. Again, in due time!

This song is also incredibly powerful for practicing two-note chords. It’s not too complex yet, but begins to move us in a direction where hitting multiple notes correctly at once isn’t so scary. Here’s one of those moments:

These examples reflect only a few of the 500+ songs available on LUMI, in addition to stage-based lessons, scale exercises, games and more. So, let the memories of a magical night in 1974 inspire you to light up your LUMI Keys as you tune in to this year's song contest, and be inspired to play along with some era-defining pop music that has stood the test of time.