‘Finally facing my Waterloo’. ABBA and Napoleonic wars as European memory artefacts in the Eurovision Song Contest

Abstract

The battle of Waterloo took place in what is now southern Belgium in June 1815, more than two hundred years ago. It has been able to remain as a European lieu de mémoire since that moment, remembered recurrently in many ways for decades. The main argument of this article is how that circumstance benefited the Swedish group ABBA when they participated in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. The success with the song ‘Waterloo’ was possible because of a sense of remembrance towards Napoleon’s final defeat, shared even by people who did not know anything about history. But they were not the first who used Napoleonic references in their music: the emperor and his wars had been chosen many times before by singers from several countries. The role of ABBA in reinforcing Europop through a historical event connected with a love situation is the other main point of this research.