Mamma Mia! How Can I Resist You?

Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Judy Craymer
Editor and interviewer: Philip Dodd

Mamma Mia! How Can I Resist You? draws together the intertwined tales behind two of popular music’s most remarkable stories: the songs of ABBA and the record-breaking show that gave those songs a fresh life and a whole new audience – Mamma Mia!

This paperback edition was published in November 2008 to coincide with the DVD of Mamma Mia! The Movie, the biggest-grossing DVD released to date. The book updated the original 2006 hardback edition to include interviews with all the main participants in the film and became a Sunday Times bestseller.

In the book Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, whose songwriting and production genius was the mainspring of ABBA’s success, talk with wit and insight – and in a way they never have done before – about how they wrote their songs, from ‘Waterloo’ and ‘Dancing Queen’ to ‘Super Trouper’ and ‘Under Attack’ and how they emerged to capture the mood of their own times and the spirit of an era.

And Mamma Mia!’s global producer and creator Judy Craymer, along with writer Catherine Johnson, producer Phyllida Lloyd and all the principal creatives, relates the roller-coaster saga of pursuing her dream of a musical based on the songs of ABBA: a classic theatrical tale full of drama, setbacks and, ultimately, overwhelming success. 

“We have this little mantra on the show that came from a review of the Broadway version: ‘Let the joy wash over you’, and it has, right to the very end – and beyond.”

Judy Craymer

Paperback edition
Orion/Phoenix
264 pages
Published 13 November 2008

ISBN 978 0753 821 015

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