STOCKHOLM — ABBA is looking for a fifth member and holding open “auditions.” I have no intention of auditioning, but, nonetheless, I step into the sound booth and up to the microphone. Just to see what it feels like.
I scan the list I was given. Wannabe fifth members can choose one of five hits from the Swedish pop quartet’s 1970s heyday: “Waterloo,” “Dancing Queen,” “Mamma Mia,” “Money, Money, Money” and “Winner Takes It All.”
I hit the touch screen, and the infectious, driving melody of “Money, Money, Money” starts. My palms are clammy. I can feel my pulse in my eyeballs. My stomach tightens. There are few things I fear more than singing. This is because I am tone-deaf. My choir director told me as much just before I went onstage for a second-grade holiday concert: “Move your lips, but don’t let any words come out,” she said.
As an adult, I don’t even sing in the shower or the car. And I especially don’t audition to join Swedish superstar pop groups, not even in a fake recording booth at a tourist attraction. If I did sing, though, it would probably be ABBA songs.
ABBA the Museum opened in 2013 on Djurgarden, across from the Grona Lund theme park and near Stockholm’s history, modern art and wildlife museums, to celebrate the biggest cultural export ever to come out of Sweden. Between 1975 and 1982, Agnetha Falt skog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, all native Swedes with the exception of Anni-Frid, who is Norwegian, sold out concert venues around the world. By some estimates, the band has sold as many as 500 million records worldwide.
The museum is the permanent home for the ABBAWORLD exhibit that toured Europe and Australia between 2009 and 2011. A 180-degree projection screen showing ABBA music videos greets visitors at the entrance. From there, the experience only gets more immersive, with interactive singing and dancing exhibits and recorded interviews with band members, their clothing designer and their manager.
I’m at the museum because, even though I was born too late to enjoy the band during its AM-radio prime, I still know the words to more songs by ABBA than any other group. I saw both the musical and movie versions of “Mamma Mia!” I can’t remember anything else about senior prom but have a startlingly clear memory of “Dancing Queen” playing as I lip-synced the words. Also, I’ve heard from locals that the museum, which is attached to the Swedish Music Hall of Fame, is more fun than a spandex bodysuit.
In addition to bright lights, spunky music, the most glittering-est and spandex-y of ABBA’s original concert costumes, exhaustive histories of each member, and recorded commentary by all four members — it’s worth the extra money for the audio guide — the ABBA museum has a half-dozen interactive exhibits that, like the audition booth, invite you to be part of the group.
But don’t run right to the high-tech exhibits or you’ll miss the rooms devoted to band memorabilia.
Deeper in the museum, I select the “easy” level ABBA quiz and find the questions decidedly not easy. For “Who did ABBA need to get the permission from for their name?” I guess “toy company.” I am wrong. The correct answer is a fish canning company. My answers to 11 of the other 15 questions are incorrect, too. Still, I score 1,500. The ABBA museum’s scoring is as uplifting as the band’s music.
Past the impressively realistic life-size waxworks of Benny, Anni-Frid, Agnetha and Bjorn, installed last year with serious pomp and circumstance and helicopters, is the Dancing Queen disco room, complete with spinning disco balls, a flashing floor, and wall-mounted televisions and screens playing footage of the band performing “Dancing Queen.” Less self-conscious about my dancing than singing, I give 110 percent here.
Sadly, this activity is not scored.
Pumped full of positive energy, I leave the museum still swaying. It’s not until I’m half a mile away, walking — still with excess exuberance and swagger — past the cathedral-esque, decidedly un-ABBA Nordic Museum, that I realize I’m also singing.
If you go …
ABBA the Museum
Djurgardsvagen 68, Stockholm
011-46-8-121-328-60
Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily; $23 for adults, $7.64 for kids ages 7 to 15, free for age 6 and younger.
Mamma Mia! The Party
Lilla Allmanna Grand 9, 115 21, Stockholm
Not part of the museum, but associated, this dinner theater picks up where the musical and movie ended, in Nikos Taverna. Must be 13 or older to attend. Open July 27 to Aug. 21. Tickets go on sale online March 10 at $157 a person.
