Official Chart Flashback 1980: ABBA - Super Trouper becomes their ninth and final Number 1

40 years ago this week, ABBA gained their ninth and final UK Number 1 single. 

Super Trouper was the third release from their penultimate LP of the same name, and it ascended to the pole position on the Official Singles Chart on this week in 1980 after two previous weeks at Numbers 2 and 13 respectively. 

Regarded by fans and critics alike as one of their greatest hits (it's their second biggest single in the UK), the melancholic tune speaks to the Swedish foursome's disillusion with life in the spotlight - ironic, considering that the song itself is named after the Super Trouper, a kind of spotlight that is used in stage productions. 

The song opens with the iconic line "I was sick and tired of everything, when I called you last night from Glasgow...", which also handily gives it its own British (well, Scottish) spin for their last UK Number 1 hit before their split two years later. 

According to Official Charts Company data, Super Trouper has notched up approximately 978,000 sales in the UK. Thanks in part to hit broadway musical and film franchise Mamma Mia!, much ABBA's catalogue edures, and Super Trouper has 30 million UK streams, their seventh most-played song.  

The iconic Swedish pop group - comprised of Agnetha, Benny, Anna-Frid and Bjorn - previously topped the charts with Waterloo, Mamma Mia, Fernando, Dancing Queen, Knowing Me, Knowing You, Name of the Game, Take A Chance On Me and The Winner Takes It All. 

MORE: ABBA's full Official Chart history

ABBA also have nine Number 1 albums to their name in the UK too. Their greatest hits collection, ABBA Gold, even has the distinction of spending more weeks in the Top 100 than any other LP. It's also the second best-selling album of all time in the UK, logging a very impressive 5.57 million copies sold as of May 2020. 

But all good things, of course, have to come to an end. After Super Trouper, ABBA would release just one more album - the dark and divisive The Visitors - before entering an indefinite break in 1982, after the marriages of Agnetha and Bjorn and Benny and Anna-Frid had splintered. 

A reunion, however, has been on the cards for quite some time, with original music apparently ready to go. Two tracks,  I Still Have Faith In You and Don't Shut Me Down were first announced in 2018, although they still have yet to be released.

The tunes were originally set to accompany a live BBC TV special and a world tour that were both derailed by legal complications and technical difficulties in the rendering of the four ABBA holograms set to be used on the special and the tour. The last we heard of it, at least five original songs were to be released, with the latest release date set at some time in 2021, according to Bjorn.

Elsewhere on the Official Singles Chart 40 years ago this week, ABBA knocked Blondie's The Tide Is High cover off of the top spot - a tune that would re-top the charts some 22 years later thanks to Atomic Kitten.

View the Official Singles Chart Top 100 from this week in 1980 here

Listen to the UK Top 40 from this week in 2003 on Spotify below. You can also listen to this playlist on Deezer and Apple Music.