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Abba's 10 new songs belong to the now and the past. It's just genius - Walla! culture

2021-11-09T07:07:34.359Z


The ten songs on the Voyage album are totally the Abba of yesteryear. Benny and Bjorn did not start producing EDM, Frida and Anita did not learn to do rap and the record company did not attach the current stars to duets. There's an album here that sounds like a direct sequel to their piece that was cut out in 1981 and it's lovely


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Abba's 10 new songs belong to the now and the past.

It's just ingenious

The ten songs on the Voyage album are totally the Abba of yesteryear.

Benny and Bjorn did not start producing EDM, Frida and Anita did not learn to do rap and the record company did not attach the current stars to duets.

There's an album here that sounds like a direct sequel to their piece that was cut out in 1981 and it's lovely

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  • Abba

  • Ed Sheeran

  • Elton John

Avi Goldberger

Tuesday, 09 November 2021, 08:49 Updated: 08:58

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In mid-September, radio broadcaster Yasser Ranja presented the British hits parade on BBC Radio 1. The names in the parade were routine - "The Weekend", Drake, Doge Cut, etc. Then Yasser got to the ninth place where there was a new entry - "Don't Shut Me Down" by the veteran Abba band - and Yasser started laughing. It was not a laugh of contempt, it was a laugh of embarrassment. Grandpa and Grandma suddenly went into the high school grandson's party and the guys did not know how to eat it.



"Don't Shut Me Down" also stormed other charts around the world. In Switzerland he ousted Ed Sheeran from the summit, in Sweden Justin Bieber and in most European countries he reached the top 10. Many stations across the continent suddenly started playing a song created by people over 70. Not a routine thing.



Two months after the release of "Don't Shut Me Down" along with another single, "I Still Have Faith in You", comes Abba's full album, "Voyage".

Abba's previous album, "The Visitor", was released exactly forty years ago, in November 1981. In the time that has passed since then, Abba has become one of the most beloved cult ensembles in the world.

Musicals, collections, films and songs that are played to this day on the radio are just part of an impressive cultural and economic success story.



Not that Abba was missing even in real time.

Their success was then so great that by the end of the seventies the quartet had become Sweden's largest economic export, bypassing Volvo.

More on Walla!

Abba's new music sounds like it used to, and that's what's exciting

To the full article

success story.

Abba (Photo: PR)

Abba's breakthrough was somehow upside down. While the stars of the mid-1970s were punkists, androgynous glam soloists and sexy disco singers, Abba brought the conformist answer. A band of two men and two women. Handsome Europeans, who were also married. The songs were melodramatic and often dealt with Western life. All this on a pop substrate, which was perfectly written and produced perfectly.



Occasionally Abba also had a twist. Among the relationship songs, they sang about a 16-year-old dancing queen, or about the need for a man after midnight. This twist made them, among other things, gay icons, some of the greatest they have ever been. In the early 1980s Bjorn and Anita divorced and immediately followed by Frida and Benny. From there the road to disbanding the band was short. Abba parted from the world and the feeling left at the end was of defeat. The perfect picture that Abba has presented all these years has been shattered.



Abba's place was taken by artists of a different kind. English New Wave stars or Madonna and Michael Jackson-style grand pop artists. By the end of the eighties, everyone had forgotten about Abba.



But then came the nineties. The 1970s were far enough away for a disco to start disco. The comeback was minor, until the pop band Erasure led by singer Andy Bell, an extroverted and charismatic gay, released a mini-album full of contemporary innovations for Abba. These innovations were a huge success and Abba got back to business. The record company has released a collection called "Gold", which has become one of the best-selling albums in history, and along with the movie "Persilia Queen of the Desert", Abba have returned to the iconic status they had at their peak. Despite this, reunion, even for performances, was taboo. A credit card company even offered the band $ 1 billion for a reunion round but the band refused. There was a rift between the band members and the band members.

But all of that, as mentioned, belongs to the past and after a few years my son and Bjorn from Abba dripping us that Otto is coming out with their new songs, it has finally happened. One can only guess why now, when only one thing is clear: the guys are complete and everyone is fine with everyone. In this sense, "Voyage" is a kind of closing circle, which the band has already announced that after its release the band will disband again.



The ten songs on the album are totally Abba of yesteryear. Benny and Bjorn did not start producing EDM, Frida and Anita did not learn to do rap and the record company did not attach the star of the hour to the duets. There's an album here that sounds like a direct sequel to their piece that was cut in 1981 and it's adorable: songs with flutes, violins, dramatic pianos and children singing in the choir. All this, with the melodramatic words written as only Abba can.

Abba's melodramatics culminate in the song "I Can Be That Woman", which depicts a conflicting couple, with all their quarrels revolving around the behavior of their bitch Tammy. "You swear and kick in the chair," Frida sings sadly. "And the bitch licks my fingers. She gets frantic every time you swear." Surprises.



The next song on the album, "Keep an Eye on Dan", is one of the album's most impressive surprises. The accompaniment includes mesmerizing analog synthesizers, which sound like those of Vince Clark Meirizer, in a kind of tribute. In the poem, Anita tells of a mother who painfully submits her son to his father for care, in a story that is somewhat autobiographical about herself who put her career at the time, before the children. The bombastic and unique song ends with sounds taken from Abba's old hit "SOS", with the next song on the album, "Bumblbee", starting as the '76 hit, "Fernando".



The whole album takes us to the abba of the past.

The track "Just a Notion" was even originally recorded in 1978, but was never released.

Everything is very confusing and exciting.

This is Abba's new music, in 2021, and it belongs to the present, but also belongs to the past.

of genius.

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Source: walla

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