The best ABBA album tracks

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/21/the-best-abba-album-tracks.html

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Abba had some greatest hits albums come out before a lot of their biggest hits, I think the first “best of” LP was in 1974, before “Dancing Queen” or “Take a Chance On Me.”

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Listening to albums is a dying art. I’ve argued with people about the merits of buying singles off iTunes vs. a whole album and listening to it end to end. Some bands are better for this than others, but you’d be surprised how much resistance there is to the idea of deep cuts. Than there’s any value outside of the “best” songs on an album, and how much people aren’t having it.

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They’re all the best.

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thank you for the music…

Agnetha Fältskog was in talks to do a compilation with a the british singer gary barlow

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They were four talented people.

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All this time I’d assumed Mike Oldfield’s “Arrival” (on his QE2 album) was the original. Glad to be set straight at last.

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Years ago I took my wife to see the musical Mamma Mia! Before the show she said “I don’t think I know any Abba songs.” I assured her that she did. Afterward she conceded “oops I was wrong I KNOW EVERY ABBA SONG AND THEY ARE ALL GREAT.”

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They’re also extraordinary complex pieces of music. I’m told that ‘Money, Money, Money’ is incredibly hard to get right because although it has lots of superficial repeats, they’re actually almost all different.

Thanks for the link, I hadn’t heard some of these for more than 30 years and they still sound fresh. And they helped kickstart the monster of the Swedish music industry which is still the third largest in the world after the US and UK. Catchy pop song? Probably performed by a Swede, written by a Swede, or composed in Sweden, or mixed by Swedes…

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Here’s a nice little meditation by Stephen Fry about ABBA. Along the way he gives a great definition of what gives the most pleasure in pop music (or popular art in general), which, he says, is when the work is “better than it needs to be.”
(When I first saw this clip I happened to be thinking about the movie Alien, and realized that it provided an excellent example. It’s a pure B-movie shocker – but a B-movie shocker in which every element is ten times better than it needs to be.)

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I passed up this LP in the thrift store for years before realizing the songs were by Bjorn and Benny,

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So glad they included “The Visitors” - that song on a mixtape singlehandedly completely changed my opinion of ABBA.

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“Does your mother know” has a weird little kick in the bass and melody line, before the chorus, that makes it seem like the whole song rises over time - great little tricks like that are priceless.

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It’s a good thing I don’t have creative control over a band. Our first album would be called “Greatest Hits” and every one after that would have a new “volume” number tacked on.

Also, I really dig ABBA. It was one of my favorite bands growing up. If you want to fight me about that, look me up in about 15 years. I should have my Wolverine spork claws by then, and no reason not to fight you.

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Obligs:

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Growing up as the albums came out I know a few Abba songs that are great but never on the Hits records. Though if you’re a beginner, you can’t go wrong buying “ABBA GOLD” and “MORE ABBA GOLD.”

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