Those 1970s Abba Outfits Existed To Avoid Taxes

Let's hark back to the golden years of the late 1970s and maybe early 1980s, shall we?

Abba and their, um, incredible fashion sense.  

Specifically, let's ponder the fashion sense of Abba, that pop sensation that gave us everything from "Dancing Queen" to "Waterloo"

It turns out that Abba's fashion sense, if you can call it that, was at least in part, not really a fashion sensibility. They were trying to avoid paying taxes, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Apparently, under Swedish law, clothing was tax exempt if they were for performances and it was judged that no sane person would wear them out in the streets as everyday wear.

"In my honest opinion, we looked like nuts in those years. Nobody can have been as badly dressed on stage as we were," Bjorn Ulvaeus of Abba said, as quoted in the Guardian article.

Watch it, though. If any country has any similar laws, you might start to see people on the street dressed more strangely than people already tend to dress.

To fully enjoy Abba, their fashion sense, their (legal) tax evasion and that era, here's their video of "Dancing Queen" so you can dance the rest of your day away.