My My! ABBA Through the Ages

My My! The story of ABBA told through a selection of their greatest hits.

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Waterloo (the song, not the battle) – a seminal moment in pop history which saw Swedish sensation ABBA burst on to the international music scene. How is it that half a century later this seventies Eurovision act is bigger than ever – reaching listeners of all ages and spinning off into musicals, museums and holograms? Giles Smith, writer and music fan, sets out to find out why.

My My! is a celebration of ABBA through the ages. It’s one fan’s way of saying: thank you for the music.

Review

‘[Giles Smith] is a perfect guide to ABBA’s ups and down on pop’s stock market [and] an astute musicologist, able to take apart these songs without wrecking their delicate internal workings . . . For such a droll book, then, My My! comes with an existential kick, concerned with the effects of time’s passing on art, the way it can become distorted through hearsay and assumption, like a fuzzy tenth-generation mix tape . . . It’s not a stretch to say that, at its core, My My! is a book about time, death and the possibility of immortality . . . As Smith’s loving testament to the band so clearly shows, in 2024 there’s nothing to hide. ABBA, their avatars facing down death itself from their purpose-built arena, have won the war’ ― Sunday Times

About the Author

Giles Smith is the author of the pop memoir Lost in Music, an updated version of which will be published by Penguin in the summer of 2023. His writing has appeared in numerous British publications and in The New Yorker. He has published two collections of journalism and a spoof memoir of the comic-strip footballer Roy of the Rovers, and, in the last ten years, he has been the ghost-writer for eight Sunday Times bestselling autobiographies.