Nothing can capture a heart like... The ABBA Thread

[James from London]

https://www.petepaphides.co.uk/writing/the-way-old-friends-do-an-unreview-of-abba-voyage

"However, it’s now 2021 and ABBA’s Christmas song isn’t very much at all like their New Year song. It’s called Little Things. It’s Christmas from a grandparent’s perspective ... perhaps inevitably, a chorus of children appear to bring the whole thing to a close. For some listeners, the sugar and corn quotient might be a bit much. But then I ask myself what the reaction would be if this had come from the pen of Paddy McAloon or Jimmy Webb. Is there anything more corny going on in here than you’d find in, say, The Christmas Song by Mel Tormé and Robert Wells? That’s the irony of appraising ABBA in 2021. The darkness that critics used to ignore in their music back in their heyday is now what everyone looks for in order to demonstrate just how much more was going on in ABBA’s music than, say, that of The Dooleys or The Nolans."

"ABBA Voyage can be whatever you want it to be. But for me, it’s a record in which I get to watch the group which acted as a Greek chorus of my childhood years enjoying each other in the third act of their life. They didn’t have to leave the curtains open so we could see what happened when they all got together again. But not only did they do that; they put it on a record. And really, there are no words to quite convey just how grateful I am for that."

 

[Karin Schill]

The more I listen to the new ABBA album the more I love it.

Also I find myself getting different new songs stuck on my mind everyday.

I also listened to an old ABBA album yesterday. Their Waterloo album and hearing a song like "My Mama Said" that has this really young rebellious feeling to it sang by someone in their 20s I just think it's amazing what a journey ABBA have made and how they've produced new music now when they are 70 +.

 

[Alexis]

I know I have said it before already but Keep an Eye on Dan is just stunning. I can't stop going back to it. That '80s sounding electronica with still a '70s disco pop sound. Agnetha's phrasing is heart breaking, then Frida's backing and even the guys doing backing vocals. The lyrics just paint a picture and put you in it. And then it ends with a little echo of SOS. Brilliant!

And can someone tell me, as I am not sure. Would Ode To Freedom be a waltz musically? It's so beautiful. And like a lot of ABBA music it sounds so simple but it's actually epic.

The more I listen to Voyage the more convinced I am that you either have to hate ABBA or just not understand them at all to not like this album. To me it sounds like a tribute to their career. It's so strange, like a retrospective of their styles. New music revisiting what made them iconic. It's absolutely perfect and I couldn't have asked for anything else or anything more.

 

[Karin Schill]

And can someone tell me, as I am not sure. Would Ode To Freedom be a waltz musically?

Actually it is more complicated than that. In pop music we generally have 4/4 rhytm. In Waltz we have 3/4.
According to musician Claes af Geijerstam the song "Ode To Freedom" changes rhytm several time. So some of it is waltz and some is not.

Also I agree with you about "Keep an Eye on Dan". That song is brilliant.

 

[Barbara On A Broomstick]

The more I listen to the new ABBA album the more I love it.

Also I find myself getting different new songs stuck on my mind everyday.

I also listened to an old ABBA album yesterday. Their Waterloo album and hearing a song like "My Mama Said" that has this really young rebellious feeling to it sang by someone in their 20s I just think it's amazing what a journey ABBA have made and how they've produced new music now when they are 70 +.

same here, Asisdes from listening to wonderful Jonnie Walker on R2 on a sunday Abba is the only thing ive played since Friday, New CD and old CDs

I love it and its on in the car to and from work on a loop

I love this one and there is part of the instrumental in it that sounds like Gaelic band RUNRIG and it sounds rather Bagpiper -ish

 

[Angela’s Cauldron]

the song "Ode To Freedom" changes rhytm several time. So some of it is waltz and some is not.

I agree. The non vocal parts have more of a waltz rhythm but the parts when they sing has a different beat. It's typical Abba in that they play with different beats and chords in the same song.

 

[Karin Schill]

I love the folk music in "When You Danced With Me". It was the first song I heard from the new album after the singles and I felt instantly that this was great.

The music makes me think of Ireland. But you think there are some Scottish influences too @Barbara Fan ?

 

[James from London]

The Quietus | Opinion | Black Sky Thinking | ABBA (All Boys Believe Anything) – Andy Miller On Voyage

Andy Miller has three crucial questions to ask of the new ABBA album (and a particularly Baltic bowl of gazpacho for music journalism)

thequietus.com

"As several commentators have pointed out, if you grew up in the 1970s, ABBA cast their spell on you in childhood; and so hearing 'I Still Have Faith In You' for the first time a few weeks ago was a particularly moving experience. Dave Grohl says he cried and so did I. More than the song, it was the sound that did it, that unique combination of voices, harmony, melody and melancholy. The years did not fall away as you listened; instead they effortlessly glided into the music itself. It sounded exactly like ABBA because… it really was ABBA, slightly worn, dignified, and not too old for sex.

"Ageing alongside the musicians whose work you have been hearing since childhood is, unsurprisingly, an experience that grows deeper as both you and they get older. For the generation born in the late '60s and early '70s, it is probably ABBA and Kate Bush who encapsulate this. As a '70s kid, you didn't have to like their records, though many of us did. Their presence was inescapable, all over radio and TV, and they were much loved by impressionists, both on screen and in the playground. So we do associate them with our childhood(s). But they have also become the way we've measured out our lives. When, in 2011, Kate Bush released 50 Words For Snow, my first thought on hearing it was not, 'Oh, this is a step on from Aerial', or 'Hmm, I'm not sure this hits the heights of Hounds Of Love', it was: 'This is the same woman who made The Kick Inside, which I borrowed from the library, who was always on the TV in our living room; we're both still here'. It was the same feeling, vertiginous and emotional, I had while watching her sit at the piano and sing 'Among Angels' at the close of the Before The Dawn show at Hammersmith in 2014. This is the same person.

"Listening to Voyage amplifies and multiplies that feeling of recognition, uncannily. These are the same people in the same group I listened to in the car in 1974 on the way to school. But listening to Voyage also reminds us of something we may have forgotten about ABBA. There was always something awkward about them, in their syntax, their subject matter, their presentation, their translation of rock & roll, Phil Spector, disco, Schlager and operetta into their own pop idiom. On side two of Voyage there is a rather mawkish ballad called 'Bumblebee', sung beautifully by Frida; it ought not to fly but it does. Which is also the essence of ABBA itself."

" ... not only have ABBA made an ABBA album, they have produced the only album ABBA could produce at this point and keep faith with themselves. Because Voyage is an album by, for and about grandparents. Songs like 'Little Things' and 'Don't Shut Me Down' address the subject explicitly; in this context, the different musical styles feel as though they have been retrieved from somewhere or like snapshots in a photo album. Is this deeply sentimental? Yes. Is it the stuff of pop music? Well, it hasn't been before but thanks to ABBA, now it is.

"The new ABBA album is the sound of two songwriters and two singers gracefully, not to say gratefully, approaching old age and facing that "music from a farther room" together with their audience. I would like to think the sun on the cover is rising rather than setting."

 

[Monzo]

In Germany Voyage sold more than the rest of the top 100 combined: more than 200.000 units.

 

[Barbara On A Broomstick]

I love the folk music in "When You Danced With Me". It was the first song I heard from the new album after the singles and I felt instantly that this was great.

The music makes me think of Ireland. But you think there are some Scottish influences too @Barbara Fan ?

Scotish/Irish music have quite a similar sound, definitely a Runrig chord or two in there

So glad they are at Number 1 in the UK Album charts

(Cant bear Adele who is boring us to death with her misery!!)

 

[Ome]

ABBA are well and truly back as Voyage charges straight in at Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart.

Racking up 204,000 chart sales in its first seven days, Voyage is the fastest-selling album of 2021 so far, and earns the biggest opening week on the UK’s Official Albums Chart in four years, since Ed Sheeran’s Divide.

Their tenth Number 1 record in the UK, Voyage is the renowned group’s first studio album to top the Official Albums Chart in 40 years – though two hits collections, The Singles and Gold both managed the feat in between.

It’s also the fastest-selling album released by a group in eight years, since One Direction’s Midnight Memories back in November 2013 – indeed, ABBA are only the fourth act in the past decade to surpass 200,000 UK chart sales in release week – the others are Adele’s 25 (November 2015) and Ed Sheeran’s Divide (March 2017).

Celebrating the news, ABBA tell OfficialCharts.com, “We are so happy that our fans seem to have enjoyed our new album as much as we enjoyed making it! We are absolutely over the moon to have an album at the top of the charts again!”

Voyage’s total is made up of 90% physical copies, including 29,900 on vinyl, which makes it the fastest-selling vinyl release of the century, overtaking the 24,500 first-week vinyl sales of Arctic Monkeys’ Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino in 2018.

This also marks ABBA’s 58th total week as UK Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart – only two other acts in history have spent more weeks at the top, The Beatles and Elvis.

Additionally, with ten Number 1 albums to their name, only seven other acts have notched up more UK chart-toppers than ABBA: The Beatles, Elvis, Rolling Stones, Robbie Williams, Madonna, Springsteen and David Bowie.

 

[Karin Schill]

Awesome that ABBA is topping the British charts. Does anyone know if they are number one in any other countries?

Also here's a new radio interview with Frida about the album:

 

[Karin Schill]

Okay I searched out the answers to my own question. Apparently ABBA Voyage was the number one album in: UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, France and Australia.

It only reached number two in the USA though, which is odd since it sold 75 000 albums there whereas their number one artist only sold 14 000 albums. So apparently the USA must have some weird system that favors streaming over actual sales of albums.

Source: https://gagadaily.com/forums/topic/373175-abbas-voyage-1-in-uk-2-in-us/

 

[Karin Schill]

It's not the right season for it anymore. But I am wondering what everyone thinks of ABBA's music video to "Little Things?"

 

[Friend!Food! Oleson]

I've been watching some of those First Time Hearing X Song Reaction videos and of course it's usually the evergreens from Queen, Bee Gees, The Mamas and The Papas etc. ABBA in particular is a popular "let's try this" and there's something....I think, validating about those positive and happy reactions.
Like, I already knew that but now they know it too.
The other part of the experience is that it felt like I just heard S.O.S. for the first time (!), so in a way they're also helping me to re-validate the song (I'm all about the "re-" these days).

 

[Friend!Food! Oleson]

But I am wondering what everyone thinks of ABBA's music video to "Little Things?"

I don't care very much for the cutesy christmas message but I do like the mini-ABBA performance.

 

[Friend!Food! Oleson]

I Feel ABBA, can't believe I've never noticed this before.

 

[Karin Schill]

I've never heard that song before. But yes it does remind a little of ABBA's sound.

 

[Ome]

The UK’s Channel 5 have an ABBA night tomorrow (21st May). The two documentaries are new as far as I can see.

I have no idea if C5 can be streamed outside the UK, hopefully those outside find a way to catch these.

• ABBA:The Movie
• ABBA: The Missing 40 Years
• ABBA: Greatest ABBA Covers

 

[James from London]

Afton sings Abba ...

... but, sadly, not the Brotherhood of Man: