As one of the bestselling pop group's in music history, the members of Abba are used to hearing their songs played almost everywhere. Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus were so incensed that they launched a legal action and said the party could "bugger off".
To add insult to injury, the youth wing of the anti-immigrant Danish People's Party also changed the words of the song, without permission, to Mamma Pia when giving their female leader Pia Kjærsgaard an adoring and rapturous send-off at a party congress last weekend.
The young Dansk Folkeparti (DF) activists sang to the Mamma Mia tune – a British number one hit in 1976 – new lyrics celebrating their far-Right leader's success in making their hard-line anti-immigrant politics mainstream.
"Mamma Pia – you're on TV, DF – will be promoted. Mamma Pia – you check it out, DF – vision you have handled. All the hard arguments – as a miracle-maker," activists sang as the rally closed on Sunday.
Andersson said: "Firstly, you cannot just rewrite songs as you like and secondly we want them to understand that we have absolutely no interest in supporting their party."
"Abba never allows its music to be used in a political context. This is something that we have pointed out to the Danish People's Party."
Mrs Kjærsgaard's People Party is the third largest in the Folketinget Danish parliament and helps to support a minority conservative-liberal coalition government.
The 63-year-old's views on immigration have been compared to the Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders and Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French national Front leader.
In 2003, she lost a libel case in the Danish Supreme Court after suing a commentator who had characterised her politics as racist.
Mrs Kjærsgaard intervened in recent Swedish elections to lend support to the far-right Sweden Democrats, who went on to win seats in the country's parliament for the first time.
The Abba founders first found out about the illicit use of their song when a Left-wing Danish activist wrote to them asking if they were backers of the far-right party.
Andersson and Ulvaeus have given their pop music a new lease of life through the internationally successful musical Mamma Mia, which was turned into a film starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth.
The multi-millionaire artists have now instructed their record company Universal to pursue legal action against the Danish People's Party.
Last year, Andersson donated over £90,000 to Sweden's radical Feminist Initiative party.
The combination of far-right politics and music has also led to legal action in Britain.
Earlier this year, Dame Vera Lynn launched legal action after the British National Party after used her White Cliffs of Dover song on a anti-immigration album without her permission.
Five songs hijacked by politics:
1) Things Can Only Get Better" by D:Ream. The lyric became the anthem for Tony Blair's New Labour but Peter Cunnah, the disillusioned singer, voted Tory earlier this year.
2) Everybody's Changing by Keane. The band was "horrified" when David Cameron used their song to launch the 2010 Tory election manifesto.
3) Man Next Door by Massive Attack. The edgy track, which proclaims "he gets me down", was an unusual choice for William Hague in 2000, the rappers were not impressed and the Tories went on to ask the man behind The Wombles for a unmemorable theme tune instead.
4) There Goes My Hero by the Foo Fighters. The song backfired for John McCain when the Republican presidential candidate was accused by the band of "perverting the original sentiment" by using the song.
5) "Ode To Joy" by Beethoven, lyrics by Schiller. The Romantic composers 1785 piece was written to inspire revolution but was used to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday and is now the EU's official anthem.
The Telegraph
