ABBA Voyage: General Discussion 2021 Sept - Dec

I am so thrilled that I got to experience new ABBA music at the age of 31 as I wasn't born during their heyday in the 70s and early 80s its been a wonderful time for me as an ABBA fan and I recently caught my best friend who has stated that he doesn't like ABBA's music singing along to 'Don't Shut Me Down' & 'Just A Notion' it really made me feel so thrilled that ABBA's music can make anyone sing along to their songs he was singing along to the second chorus of 'Don't Shut Me Down', 'he then replied I don't normally like ABBA's music but this song is absolutely awesome no way can anyone sound this good over the age of 70'.

Alan, I agree with you about Little Things and Bumblebee. I just don't like me. Infact Bumblebee just passes over me. I can never really remember it. They are the only songs on Voyage I don't like. I like the varied mix on the album both in terms of tempo and music style. I just don't get those songs.
Just a Notion has grown on me too.

I think the best songs are the first two singles - I Still Have Faith in You and Don't Shut Me Down.

I think nobody seriously expected Little Things to reach No.1 But obviously the new ABBA songs (not only Little Things) were popular among non ABBA fans too (or casual ABBA fans as opposed to hard cores), because otherwise they would hardly climb so high in the charts.

Amazon UK has dropped the price of the Voyage jewel case CD/the softpack CD to £6.99 and the 'eco box' to £9.99.

Not sure how long for - but handy if you wanted any of these formats and held off...

The BBC has quite suddenly A-listed unspecified 'Tracks from Voyage' on its Radio 2 playlist from today's date. Perhaps as a result of clearing away the Christmas hits.

Will be interesting to see which tracks they feature most heavily.

Voyage chart and sales update.


No. 1 for Christmas in Sweden, Austria and Switzerland. Top 3 Finland, Belgium (Flanders), Germany, Netherlands, Ireland and of course UK.


Top selling album of 2021 in Germany and Switzerland. Almost certainly Sweden too.

Certifications

Platinumx2 Germany 400,000
Platinum UK 300,000 (386,000)
Platinum France 100,000
Platinumx2 Sweden 60,000
Platinum Austria 15,000

Plus 140,000 pure sales in USA

Global sales 1.5 million plus.

Johnny, I agree. ISHFIY and DSMD are stellar pop songs. Generally, I have always leaned towards the melancholy and introspective side to ABBA's music. However, my favourite from " Voyage " is DSMD. For once, it is an uplifting track that receives " my thumbs up ". ISHFIY is very beautiful and wistfully reflective. DSMD is an infectiously catchy pop anthem. Pure classic ABBA ! WYDWM, ICBTW, KAEOD, NDAI and OTF are all top tier ABBA. Also, I am very fond of JAN and BB. LT is very sweet and innocent and has grown on me I have to admit. Unfortunately I don't know any of the additional tracks that were recorded in 2017.

Madonnabba, yes, WYDWM could have done with an extra verse but I still love it.

johnny, I think the only one we know for definite (apart from the first two singles) is Little Things, which is from 2021. The single sleeve confirms that. Disappointingly, Just A Notion’s CD single sleeve did not specify a date, just 1978 and 2017-2021 (unless the new backing track was worked on in both years).

Covid isn’t necessarily the reason they didn’t record in 2020. They didn’t do anything in 2018 either (perhaps this was when the five-week motion capture shows took place?). The first two songs were from later in 2017, and it appears they didn’t reconvene until January 2019. The snow photo dates from then. It’s unlikely three songs took a year to record, so it’s possible they weren’t doing anything for a whole 12 months prior to the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

I would hazard a guess that the decision to record more songs in order to have enough for a full album was made partly because of Covid. The media had rumoured an album before then, but the pandemic meant that they had more time than expected before the ABBATars show would be ready. And probably the record company pointed out to them that five songs was neither one thing nor the other: either just do two or ten but don’t stop halfway.

I’m sure Carl Magnus Palm will be availed with the information in due course, and write a whole book out of it…

Yes, the first two singles are certainly my favourites on the album. I can understand why B&B might have been quite excited by them, and even decided to revive ABBA to record them. But the creativity evident on those two songs is lacking on the rest of the album. There are very few sparks of genius around. I think the fact that they dragged up Just A Notion suggests Benny may have been having trouble filling the album.

VOYAGE is a very beautiful album for me. When I heard that Abba would come out with a brand new album, I couldn't wait. was so curious. I must say that I am certainly not disappointed, because the album is for me as I expected from ABBA. great song that just gives me goosebumps so very beautiful. What I do wonder is whether the hologram is really what one would expect from a real concert. Been to a concert myself in the year 1979. I was completely blown away so amazing. hologram will certainly be very well made and since Benny and Björn go for perfection.

I wouldn't refer to any of the tracks on Voyage as filler. Certainly not Bumblebee which Frida said she put her heart into when singing it (or words to that effect). Just because a song doesn't float your boat doesn't mean it's filler. Like with Little Things...some people won't like it because they find it too 'sweet' but some people have a sweet tooth and some prefer savoury. Neither are intrinsically bad, it's simply a question of taste. Someone's preference doesn't make it fact.

Super Deluxe Edition includes Voyage in its albums of the year:

“Recording a comeback album 40 years after your last and NOT GETTING IT WRONG is an incredible feat. The ‘ABBAtar’ show will most likely be a great success, but if it Isn’t, it will just be one of those things… An interesting, failed experiment. Whereas a new album that fails to deliver will blight your discography forever – you won’t be allowed to forget the misstep. Happily, for Björn, Agnetha, Benny and Frida, the Voyage hits the sweet spot.

”At its best – ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’, ‘I Still Have Faith In You’, ‘Ode To Freedom’ – the album approaches some of the band’s best work in the late 1970s but even the tracks that don’t reach those heights – ‘When You Danced With Me’, ‘Bumblebee’, ‘No Doubt About It’ – have so much charm and are so much fun, that it really doesn’t matter. There are echoes from the past all over the place, which just makes the whole thing pure ABBA.

”The secret of Voyage‘s success was the so-called ‘trend-blind’ approach. Most artists returning from a long spell away instinctively put the feelers out with a view to collaborating with the hip/successful producer or writer of the era. Labels and management may advise that it will increase the artist’s chances of having a hit or getting radio play (SDE’s recent interview revealed that Tears For Fears have experienced this very phenomenon in recent years) . But Benny and Bjorn did no such thing. They didn’t want their album to be produced by Stuart Price (to pick an example). To paraphrase F1 driver Kimi Räikkönen, they know what they’re doing. So the two men wrote songs together exactly as they used to. They used a small trusted team of musicians and engineers; had no interest in sounding ‘contemporary’; and removed any pressure from the enterprise by vowing that if the album wasn’t any good, they’d simply not release it. It’s not like they needed the money.

”Voyage was, and is, a wonderful gift to music fans of a certain age and ABBA even released four CD singles (albeit miserly one-track affairs) which raised a smile at the time. It really did feel like ‘the old days’ at times.”


I think “I Can Be That Woman” was singled out as a lowpoint in SDE’s original review of the album. Seems to have been replaced by WYDWM, Bumble Bee and NDAI - Little Things appears to have avoided such a mention.

I agree, I noticed that a number of vocal fans dislike Little Things because its sweet or twee. i know theres a number of other people whether fans or superfans who like the song but not just vocal about it. Social media can sometimes make the vocalized opinions seem the dominant one. I liked Little Things from the start, it didnt have to grow on me. I must confess that Dont shut me down took a few listens before I liked it and its now one of my favorites in the album. Voyage is one album i dont skip ANY song. In some of their past albums there may be one song i dont listen to or skip (e.g  two for the price of one, me and I, man in the middle, etc).