Swedish pop phenomenon ABBA were one of the biggest acts of the 1970s. But at the peak of their global reign in 1976, punk rock arrived with its take-no-prisoners mandate, rejecting everything the quartet seemed to represent. To punks, ABBA’s polished, euphoric pop was the very antithesis of their stripped-down, nihilistic ethos.
Time has revealed a different story, however. In the decades since, numerous musicians across the spectrum have declared their love for the four Swedes. Speaking in a 2024 live Instagram session, Ritchie Blackmore called them “the best band.” Blondie cited them as an influence on their 1979 hit “Dreaming,” while Elvis Costello echoed pianist Benny Andersson’s “Dancing Queen” piano motif in 1979’s “Oliver’s Army.”
Even Kurt Cobain was an unabashed fan, so much so that he invited ABBA tribute act Björn Again to open for Nirvana at England’s Reading Festival in 1992. (Sadly, it never happened.)
Most surprising of all, however, were the admissions from ABBA’s supposed ideological opposites: the Sex Pistols.
Formed by John Lydon, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook, the Pistols defined British punk and helped export its sneering attitude worldwide. Publicly embracing ABBA at the time would have been fatal, but in later interviews and memoirs, the band members acknowledged the truth: They loved ABBA.
I’m amazed that no one has yet noticed that ‘Pretty Vacant’ is borrowed from ‘SOS’. But that’s what songwriting is all about. Everything is nicked from something else."
— Glen Matlock
Listen closely to their lone studio album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, and the connection becomes clearer. Beneath the distortion lies a gleaming pop architecture — layered electric guitars, meticulous production and undeniable hooks, the hallmarks of ABBA’s studio craft.
Matlock was the most forthcoming. Speaking in 2018, the bassist praised ABBA’s songwriting outright. “As pop songwriters, they’re fantastic,” he said, noting that Cook’s drumming may even have subconsciously drawn from “Waterloo.” Influence, he explained, works by “osmosis.”
In his memoir, I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, Matlock revealed that ABBA directly inspired the Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant.”
“I was in an upstairs bar in Charing Cross Road one lunchtime drinking my way through that week’s dole money when ABBA’s ‘SOS’ came on the jukebox,” he recalled. “I heard the riff on it, one simple repeated octave pattern. All I did was take that pattern and alter it slightly — putting in the fifth, to be technical. Got it, I thought. What could be simpler?
“I’m amazed that no one has yet noticed that ‘Pretty Vacant’ is borrowed from ‘SOS’. But that’s what songwriting is all about. Everything is nicked from something else."
(When confronted with this fact, ABBA guitarist and cowriter Björn Ulvaeus admitted it was news to him.)
Matlock’s candor paid off in unexpected ways. “The bass player from ABBA somehow got my address and started sending me Christmas cards for about 10 years!” he revealed in a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone.
The influence extended to production. ABBA’s signature “wall of sound,” built from painstakingly layered Gibson Les Paul guitars, became a template for Jones, who obsessively double-tracked and overdubbed his white '74 Gibson Les Paul Custom and a Black Beauty to give Never Mind the Bollocks its immense sonic weight.
Sid loved David Bowie. But he adored ABBA.”
— John Lydon
Even Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren embraced the contradiction. He once described his vision for the band as the Bay City Rollers with attitude and ABBA’s melodic sophistication, later calling ABBA “a brilliant pop artifact you couldn’t help but be captivated by.”
On tour, the Pistols’ affection was hardly theoretical. Their van had but a single cassette — ABBA’s 1975 Greatest Hits compilation, which they played relentlessly.
That devotion extended to Matlock’s replacement, Sid Vicious.
“He loved David Bowie,” Lydon told an audience in 2021 on his I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right Q&A Tour, “but he adored ABBA.”
As he recalled, one of the worst things that ever happened to Sid took place during a Pistols Scandinavian trek in 1977 when the punk upstarts and the Swedish pop behemoths crossed paths at Stockholm airport. The Swedish quartet were dressed in white furs. The Pistols were drunk and disorderly.
“We’d been drinking all day in Scandinavia because flights were cancelled,” Lydon told The Irish Independent in 2025. “But Sid couldn’t handle alcohol. As soon as he’d seen ABBA, all in matching white fur coats, looking like polar bears, he went running over. ‘ABBA!’ Then he vomited.
“They were horrified. I think we got carted off. There was a police wagon involved.”
It was an absurd collision of two opposing musical worlds. But beneath the sneers and safety pins, the truth was undeniable: Even punk’s biggest rebels couldn’t resist perfect pop.
