Do we like Björn Ulvaeus?
Our score: 9 out of 10. He backs the climate kids, anti-racism protests and democracy education, with one apologised gaffe and no harmful words found.
Björn Ulvaeus is half of the songwriting engine behind ABBA, alongside Benny Andersson. In 2024 King Carl XVI Gustaf made all four members Commanders of the First Class of the Royal Order of Vasa, for outstanding efforts in Swedish and international music life. That's the sort of gong that took the order almost 50 years to hand out again.
The big stoush on his record is a tax one, and he won it. The Swedish tax authority argued that contracts moving his song royalties into companies were shams. A Swedish court sided with him in 2008 and approved his appeal. It's a rich-bloke-and-his-accountants story, but a court found for him, so it's no black mark.
The one proper foot-in-mouth came in 2013, on BBC Breakfast. Asked about running, he said it was good unless you were in the Boston Marathon, days after the bombing. He quickly apologised, calling it “an unbelievably stupid slip of the tongue” and saying he felt sorrow for the victims. One bad live-TV moment, owned within a day, is not a pattern.
His AI stance is the one thing to watch. He has said AI is “such a great tool” and that he is writing a musical with its help. He has also warned that badly regulated generative AI could cause great damage to human creators, and he stresses protecting creators' rights. Where you land depends on whether you see that as a working songwriter's pragmatism or a risk to the craft.
The good stuff is practical. In 2019 he gave away about 111,000 copies of a book on misinformation to Swedish final-year students, because he felt democratic institutions were being undermined by fake news. And his Trump jab in 2026 was typical: a light touch, and he never even named the bloke.
So: a pop legend who has used his fame for climate, anti-racism and democracy, with one daft gaffe he apologised for. Not a saint, and no scandal sheet either. The gap in the record is that I found nothing on LGBTQ+ or trans issues in his own words, but the harm test comes up clean.