As a companion piece to the new DVD release of ABBA: The Movie, ABBA: The Album<\/i> is a good album made even better. It boasts a pair of terrific Top 20 singles, several immaculately produced ballads and even a mini-musical tacked on to close things out on a theatrical note. <\/p>\n
This was the first hint of all things Broadway that were still to come for the men of ABBA, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. Before the stage productions of Chess and Mamma Mia!, there was something called \u201cThe Girl With The Golden Hair,\u201d which was featured as the centerpiece of ABBA\u2019s documented tour of Australia in 1977. <\/p>\n
As with all movie musicals, it is better to see them to get the full impact. Listening to the songs is only half of the total experience. \u201cThe Girl With The Golden Hair\u201d is certainly no exception, especially considering that only three of the four songs are featured on The Album. The one song missing, \u201cGet On The Carousel,\u201d was never even recorded by the Swedish group, making it one of the rarest unreleased ABBA songs. Its lack of inclusion on record is a huge error on ABBA\u2019s part, since it is an exciting, upbeat song that helped to punch things up quite considerably for the concert audience at the time. <\/p>\n
Alas, we have to get by with the left-over trio of \u201cThank You For The Music,\u201d \u201cI Wonder\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m A Marionette,\u201d none of which has much staying power. The best thing I can say about \u201cThank You For The Music\u201d is that it has become something of an ABBA theme song over the years since they disbanded back in 1982. Taken together, all three songs helped to set a dramatic, heavier tone to the album, making it perhaps the most substantial album ABBA had released in the 1970s. Choosing the song \u201cEagle\u201d to open the album certainly is a statement in itself, as if ABBA was trying desperately to say \u201cHello, America, we have arrived.\u201d <\/p>\n
The ABBA of old can also be found on The Album<\/i> with the one-two punch of \u201cTake A Chance On Me\u201d and \u201cHole In Your Soul.\u201d They represent the lighter, catchier side of ABBA, so much so that they could fit in nicely on any given episode of Sesame Street. I mean that as a compliment, by the way. Just to clarify, young kids will tend to love those two songs probably more than adults — though that\u2019s strictly a hunch.<\/p>\n
An even better choice for a single was \u201cThe Name Of The Game,\u201d which is far more mature in style, making it one ABBA song that never quite sounds like one. I don\u2019t know how the hell they managed to pull it off, but boy, did they ever. The growth they managed to achieve since their previous hit \u201cDancing Queen\u201d is quite remarkable. Frankly, I never did much care for \u201cDancing Queen,\u201d which is one of the most mundane and overplayed Abba songs; it is not representative of the group, much like Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” (which I call “Dreary”) does not represent that group’s best moment. Sadly, “Dancing Queen” was ABBA’s only No. 1 hit — which proves where America’s head was as far as popular music in 1977. <\/p>\n
Take two of ABBA\u2019s ballads from this album: \u201cOne Man, One Woman\u201d and \u201cMove On.\u201d Sure, the latter has an awkward spoken intro by Bjorn, but otherwise both tunes are lushly composed and feature some beautiful harmonies by Agnetha and Frida. As I get older, I find the slower pace of an album like this to be somewhat comforting and strangely refreshing. <\/p>\n
Most notable for its cohesiveness and polished production, ABBA\u2019s The Album<\/i> is not only a great soundtrack for their movie, it is also deserving of being deemed a classic album. It wasn\u2019t necessarily the high water mark of their career, but it certainly was a turning point and signpost of even better things to come. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":24797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5870],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40172","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-abba","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40172"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40172"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}