The Album

Performer: ABBA
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: ABBA: Bjorn Ulvaeus (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars); Benny Anderson (vocals, keyboards); Agnetha Faltskog, Anni Frid Lyngstad (vocals). Additional personnel: Lasse Wellander, Janne Schaffer (guitar); Lars O. Carlsson (flute, saxophone); Rutger Gunnarsson (bass); Ola Bunkert, Roger Palm (drums); Malando Gassama (persussion). Recorded at Glen, Metronome and Marcus Studios, Stockholm, Sweden in 1977. Includes reissue liner notes by Carl Magnus Palm. Digitally remastered using 24-bit technology by Jon Astley. Not quite the soundtrack to the Swedish foursome's film debut, ABBA: The Movie (directed by respected Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallestrom), THE ALBUM combines several songs from the movie, including the deliriously bouncy hit "Take A Chance On Me" and the dramatic "The Name of the Game," with three songs from Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson's never-completed musical The Girl with the Golden Hair. These three songs are among the band's most intriguing, with "Thank You for the Music" serving as the band's unofficial theme song and "I Wonder (Departure)" one of their most affecting ballads. It's the near-violent, bitterly ironic "I'm A Marionette" that's the wild card. Easily the angriest song ABBA ever recorded, "I'm A Marionette" sounds in retrospect like a portent of the band's rancorous end less than four years later. Curiosities and all, THE ALBUM may be ABBA's creative highpoint.

Q (9/01, p.126) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Similar highpoints [to their apex ARRIVAL] are sprinkled throughout..." Uncut (p.92) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Benny and Bjorn's admiration of Fleetwood Mac leads to languid soft-rock..."

Not many pop groups end up on postage stamps, as Abba has in its native Sweden; but then again, few groups become their homeland's most identifiable export. The group's stratospheric success was built on a foundation of buoyant, exquisitely arranged and produced pop music. Although they called it a day in the early 1980s, Abba lives on in the form of popular tribute bands and albums, a Broadway musical, and consistent record sales of their voluminous catalog.

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