Abba are back- the most unexpected reunion.

Abba are back - the most unexpected reunion.

Now who saw that one coming? Word has got back to us that one of the world's grooviest, slickest,  most easy listening of all 1970s pop music groups are getting back together for what promises to be one of the most improbable comebacks in the history of pop music. And yet it all seems as if they've never been away because Benny or was it Bjorn told us that it was rather like stepping back into a recording studio and nothing had changed not one iota.

 The men with their thick beards were still there and the girls were also champing at the bit, ready to dust down those platform shoes and bracing themselves for a full blooded concert in front of hysterical teenybopper audiences. Those flared trousers were so right for the time and besides who cared what we looked like because we knew that Abba had monopolised the whole decade and, it has to be said, every club disco up and down the land. The turntables were more or less dominated by Abba singles and how we enjoyed every minute of it.

Yesterday at a light hearted press conference Benny and Bjorn stood side by side with that legendary song writer and musical maestro Tim Rice. It doesn't seem like 30 years ago but both Rice and Abba had once collaborated on the West End musical Chess which for some ended in check mate and others simply a triumphant charge of the knight and castle. Chess, according to your reaction at the time, spent a considerable amount on the London stage and you sensed that Rice was full of gratitude for everything that Benny and Bjorn had done for Chess.

But here we are again on the first day of May and you weren't imagining it. You can open your eyes now in sheer wonderment because Abba are turning back the clock to a time in Britain when miners went on strikes, there was trade union argy bargy confrontation and power cuts that reduced us to candles that never seemed to go out. It was a time of economic heartache and festering dissent in the ranks. It was a time for angry militancy, fury, indignation, unrest, miners rubbing their cold hands together outside bleak picket lines and general winters of discontent.

Then almost exactly 44 years ago a pop music whirlwind swept across the world with unstoppable force. They were called Abba and in 1974 they sung that blissfully melodious song that would win the Eurovision Song Contest by several country miles. The song was 'Waterloo', a jolly, jovial, upbeat and uptempo ditty that came to epitomise Eurovision in all of its cheesy splendour or so some might have told you then.  There was, in essence though, a delightful Scandinavian innocence about Waterloo that in retrospect somehow seems very dated now but then was utterly relevant.

But in 1974 Abba quite literally arrived and would later come to release a somehow aptly titled album called Arrival. Here on the album cover was a helicopter whose occupants would take their songs to the most exalted heights of success and prosperity. Now Abba were here to announce themselves as instantly identifiable pop music icons whose music would transcend every musical genre that had gone before. Some might have called it candy floss pop mixed in with allegedly corny lyrics but nevertheless lovably homespun lyrics.

There was 'Dancing Queen, a catchy number designed exclusively for the disco dance floor where now flared trousers and platform shoes had captured the moods and fashions of 1970s with its sweetly flavoured song titles and equally as piquant words. Dancing Queen suggested that the world had now been overtaken by fashionable young girls determined to rule the disco floor with their flouncy dresses and skirts. Little did they know that towards the end of the 1970s  two record breaking, blockbuster movies 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'Grease' would fulfill those long held dreams.

There was the 'Name of the Game' 'Fernando', the exceptional 'Mama Mia', and of course the ultimate homage to everything that makes the world go around. 'Money, Money, Money' broke all chart topping records quite literally with its enduringly infectious message. Money may have been the root of evil but it could also buy you several islands in the Caribbean, glamorous speedboats that were roughly the size of Monaco, classic looking yachts  in every part of the globe, a huge collection of Rolls Royces, dining rooms with glittering chandeliers and vast houses in gated communities that hid a thousand secrets.

Sadly, by the end of the 1970s Abba, aka Benny, Bjorn and Agnetha and Ani Frid found that the old magic had betrayed them.  Music had moved into an entirely different set of communities and the world had now found itself in a 1980s Russian glasnost where disco had now been replaced by an altogether more aggressive and anarchic pop music style. Now the edgy and apparently disenchanted youth chose punk rather than soul and the desperately disillusioned, disenfranchised kids on the streets must have felt terribly rejected and overlooked.

Here were the fans who must have idolised Abba on their way back from their Golden Egg restaurants and their Chicken in A Basket dinners. Abba always looked so united, deeply harmonious, in touch with the cool, modern zeitgeist, singing in the most heartfelt fashion to a generation who were in their element when Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Anni Frid swayed and shimmied their way onto the stage. The girls flicked back their scarves and shawls with deliberately flirtatious intent and the boys played their guitars and pianos with real style, verve and overwhelming passion.

The hits seemed to come thick and fast. Who could ever forget that Abba video that seemed to be  shot on some isolated spot next to a skiing resort? Wrapped up warmly in thick coats, scarves and only a snowman for company the band began to belt out a good old fashioned chart topping song that would have definitely appealed to all age groups, diverse musical tastes and classes.

So now it is that we warmly welcome back our Swedish friends from that far off land of Earth Wind and Fire, Tavares, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, a society determined to create their very own distinctive landscape with their own watercolours.  We must have known what we were getting with Abba because they certainly knew what their fans wanted. They were all clean, presentable, well mannered and seemingly unfazed by the fans, the idolatry and the adoring adulation.

Yesterday we learnt that the new Abba have now recorded two brand new singles which is rather like discovering that you'd stumbled upon quite accidentally a twinkling set of diamond rings at the back of an attic. It seems certain that it is not a long term project because it is hard to see a 70 plus group of singers reliving the good times and then realising that their competition consists of Ed Sheeran, electro trance music and the powerful voice of Adele.

For years some of the most loyal Beatles fans clamoured for ages for a reunion of the Fab Four when quite clearly there was never any intention to even pick up a guitar let alone revisit the Yankee Stadium in New York. Somehow a rebooted, remastered and revitalised Abba with teenage enthusiasm for their music seems nothing but a pipe dream and absurdly unrealistic. But you never know.

Still Abba, with the same line up are gearing for that long awaited, headline grabbing comeback. They cynics may regard their return as some kind of cheap publicity stunt intended to remind us of the old days. There are quite possibly very few sentimental reasons for this remarkable re-appearance other than a simple desire to perform and play their music. Abba essentially owned much of the 1970's pop scene,  establishing a rhythm, musical motif and precedent that others tried to follow but could never quite re- produce.

 Abba were easy listening, healthy, bracing and salubrious to a certain extent. Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Anni Frid can't wait to get going again and Sweden, it is safe to assume, are bound to hold street parties and quite possibly declare a national holiday. You can almost feel the excitement in Stockholm as ardent Abba fans cry with joy at the prospect of two new singles to add to their well stocked record collection. December is reported to be the release date but some of us can still remember both the stage musical and film version of Mama Mia with the brilliantly peerless Julie Waters and the wonderful Piers Brosnan. Oh these are special years, always good times. Abba are back and let me hear you everybody. She was undoubtedly the Dancing Queen and you can almost feel the mid 1970s again. Let's look for the Arrival album again. It's got to be somewhere.