By Brennan Carley
In 1998, Britney Spears traveled to Stockholm to record songs for her debut album, ...Baby One More Time, with producers like Max Martin and Rami Yacoub. She was one of many stars at the time who ventured to the Swedish city to capitalize on the words and sounds of its burgeoning pop scene. Months later, at a dance school only a few miles away, a team of record label executives convened to audition a group of 100 teenagers for a project they were calling the “ABBA Teens,” an homage to Sweden’s most popular musical export.
That year, ABBA were celebrating their 25th anniversary as a group, though they hadn’t released new music in nearly two decades. Beloved by an older generation of Swedes, ABBA were known around the world for their outrageous (and tax-evading) costumes, as well as their massive hits like “Dancing Queen” and “Waterloo.” Their songs hadn’t yet been repurposed into a long-running Broadway musical, which later inspired a blockbuster movie franchise starring Meryl Streep. ABBA weren’t, for lack of a better word, cool. But the ABBA Teens were meant to change that by introducing the foursome’s hits to a new wave of music consumers: pop-savvy pre-teens discovering their taste as they came of spending age.
One name change later, the four singers chosen became the A*Teens. Their first album, The ABBA Generation, topped the charts in Sweden and sold over 2 million copies worldwide. But it was their all-originals follow-up, 2001’s Teen Spirit that broke the group in non-Swedish markets. “Bouncing off the Ceiling (Upside Down)” pierced the Billboard Hot 100 and became their biggest hit to date, catapulting the A*Teens from opening act to headliners. They toured the globe. They became Radio Disney mainstays, playing concerts across the United States with other popular early-aughts acts like the Baha Men and Aaron Carter. Teen Spirit went to No. 50 on the U.S. chart, but captured the hearts and attention of young listeners around the world.
On the surface, things seemed perfect for the foursome, but after the release of their third studio album Pop ’til You Drop!, the group quietly disbanded without much notice. Fans were treated to a Greatest Hits album in 2004 and then… silence. It took until 2006 for a member to acknowledge publicly that the A*Teens were no more; it took many more for the group to reunite as friends, ready to revisit the whiplash six years that changed their lives forever.
While ABBA has seen their own cultural resurgence in recent years due in large part to the success of the star-studded Mamma Mia! movies, the A*Teens’ impact lives on, having given early opportunities to producers and songwriters who went on to work with major talents like Avicii, Zara Larsson, and Lady Gaga. 20 years after the release of Teen Spirit, the album that crystallized that legacy, MTV News Zoomed with each member of the group as well as the creative team who helped shape them into global superstars. (Members of ABBA declined to comment.) This is the oral history of the A*Teens, a teenaged cover band not built to last that somehow overcame all expectations to become one of the most beloved and successful groups of pop’s pre-fab era.

In 1998, approaching the 25-year anniversary of ABBA’s official formation at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, Stockholm Records began discussing plans to celebrate while injecting new life into the Swedish group’s back catalog.
Ola Håkansson (founder, Stockholm Records): I used to work with Agnetha [Fältskog, from ABBA], so I know the members quite well. I had a company called Stockholm Records and the idea was to try to launch Swedish artists internationally. Niklas was the marketing manager, and he came up with this idea: "What if we do something with the ABBA catalog?"
Niklas Berg (marketing manager, Stockholm Records): We had a concept and we had tour dates, because we were tying it to the anniversary. I bribed this one tour sponsor. I promised them we would be No. 1 on the charts, otherwise they didn’t have to pay for it. I said to my boss, "This must work."
Anders Johansson (A&R, Stockholm Records): We ended up trying a show school in Stockholm. We started off trying to find kids with a singing background, but a problem we have here with Swedes is that people love being successful but also comfortable. With the recording industry, being comfortable is not a good thing.
Berg: The idea was to have people 10 to 11 years old. But when we started to meet these people, we thought, "Oh you couldn't put a 10-year-old girl on tour." When we met Amit, Sara, Dhani, and Marie, we said, "Oh, this is much better,” because they were 14 and 15 years old.
Håkansson: We went down there with a camera and said, "We're going to put together a group that will sing and dance ABBA music." They sang a song a cappella. We picked out Marie, Dhani, Sara, and Amit. They could sing and they could move, and they were young and really enthusiastic.
Amit Paul (member, A*Teens): I was brought up in an academic home, but I always had music with me. I was playing the piano when I was 4, and we were always singing. My main passion came through Lasse Kühler’s dance school, where we were discovered. I joined there when I was 13 on a whim. I spent almost all my time, apart from studying, at the dance school. I quit all sports and just did that.
Sara Lumholdt (member, A*Teens): I did the choir there as well, so it was everything from ballet, tap, show dance, jazz, choir, and jitterbug. I wasn't there for that long before we got the audition.
Dhani Lennevald (member, A*Teens): I started there when I was 7 because my older sister danced and I was like, "I don't want to play football and hockey. Fuck that. I want to do this." When I was 14, the head of the school called me and said, "I would like you to come next weekend. We have a little audition."
Marie Serneholt (member, A*Teens): I've known since I was very young that I wanted to entertain. Our dance teacher said a record company wanted to hold a big casting for a secret project. It was just supposed to be an album, and we were going to tour in Sweden for a summer. It was not supposed to be anything bigger.
Lumholdt: There were two different auditions. On the first, I sang “The Rose” by Bette Midler. On the second, I sang “Mamma Mia.” That's where they teamed us together. They put a song on and they're like, “OK, dance around, have fun!” They wanted to see chemistry in the group. We had such good fun. No one really knew how big it was going to become.