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I’m conscious that this topic has been hijacked by discussion of Kate Bush, which I’ve assisted with (apologies, richard). There is a Kate Bush thread, but I’m wondering if there’s another discussion? Are certain acts seen as beyond criticism, and in some cases is their most derided work described as the best by some fans who are somehow desperate to be seen as a) supportive of the act and b) better than other fans because they think they “get” something others don’t?

Oops. Yes. 37 years is a very long time. The Winner Takes It All and Don’t Shut Me Down / I Still Have Faith In You have that length of a separation. I’d love for Kate to come back with something really good but accessible. It’s rumoured she might release a new album this year (she’s recently moved distribution of most of her work from Parlophone/Warner to a smaller independent company). If she can do something only half as good as those two ABBA songs it will be worth waiting for.

Yes, and the album notes state Just A Notion as being recorded 1978 and 2021. Only the JAN single notes state 2017 to 2021, which I take to be incorrect.

I think we can surmise that more work went into I Still Have Faith In You and Don’t Shut Me Down than we might have thought. They wouldn’t have time to do as much work on the other songs, and as they wouldn’t be part of the show and wouldn’t be the first singles, they were seen as less important.

If one of the the incomplete songs was from 2019, it would suggest it wasn’t considered good enough or wasn’t worth the amount of work needed.

End? You’re optimistic aren’t you? 😀

I’d like to think that there are some restrictions on what Polar/Universal can do with Voyage. The rights to it are owned by ABBA via their company 1221 AB. Unlike Happy New Year, use of Little Things or any Voyage track would have to be approved by ABBA. Voyage was included in the CD and vinyl box sets last year but perhaps the licensing agreement doesn’t extend to endless coloured vinyls of the same song.

I wonder if ABBA have any regrets about not having much say in how their 1972-82 output is used? They once each owned a 12.5% stake in Polar but sold up in the 1980s, allowing Stig to sell the entire company (and with it, all of ABBA’s work) to PolyGram.

In my ideal scenario, the two incomplete tracks would have been finished, and included on the album in place of Little Things and Just A Notion.

Little Things would have been single-only. No mention of it in interviews. Announced on the same day in December 2021 as the snow photo was unveiled, and released that week as a completely unexpected surprise. It would not have made much - if any - difference to its chart position or radio airplay, but would have been a nice post-album release. That way, even if I still didn’t think much of it, I could accept it better. As it stands, I really resent a Christmas song being on a studio album (and whatever anyone says, Happy New Year is NOT the same thing - it’s not Christmas).

Just A Notion, I’m not sure what I’d have done with. Perhaps kept it until the 50th anniversary in 2024. Still as a single, still with a new backing track, just not on the album proper. Then, later in 2024, add both Just A Notion and Little Things as bonus tracks to Voyage (but making it clear that they are bonus tracks and not part of the core album).

With Just A Notion, there’s still a sense that they cheated a bit. It’s not a fully new album, and it wasn’t good enough for Voulez-Vous. Even as part of ABBA Undeleted, I never saw it as a highlight. There’s much better stuff in that medley.

Even if the two incomplete songs really aren’t that good, they have some advantage in that there is (presumably) no Christmas theme and they’re not old songs that have been dug up and dusted down. They might well be the two worst tracks on my ideal album, but I’d still be prepared to trade in JAN and LT for them (even if we’d still get both of those in my scenario).

There is another way of looking at this though. Only three songs from an album are allowed to chart. As the first two singles were already out there, and one of them being the first track on the album, When You Danced With Me may simply have benefitted from the advantage of being the second track on the album (and first new one). You could surmise that this got more streams because enough people heard it, but some didn’t like it and decided not to listen to anymore!

Also how much of a track has to be heard before it counts as a stream? Is it possible enough people heard what is required and then turned off? Could this song actually have put some off from the rest of the album?

That was a UK issue with some quite dodgy artwork choices (for instance, a 1980 photo used for a 1978 single). I wouldn’t want them to reissue that even if they could. Germany (or West Germany as it was then) did a black vinyl set with their garish artwork that I equally wouldn’t want to see again.

Plus there was that 40-single black vinyl box they issued in 2014, so it would just be repeating that really, but on gold vinyl. As the picture disc/coloured vinyl singles series is only halfway through, another box would be a bit pointless.

It would be a bit of a damp squib if the 50th anniversary passed without much being done. Just Like That is unlikely but I’d like to hear something that’s unreleased.

In a Kate Bush group on Facebook, I once posted a link to Kate Bush’s company, Noble & Brite Ltd, on Companies House as I thought some might find it of interest. I was lambasted for it - seems fans don’t want to know those sort of things, even when they’re in the public domain and anyone can Google them (I just did and found it with ease).

Companies House obviously doesn’t go into the kind of detail that this ABBA article did though. I’d agree that mentioning vehicles driven is a bit of a security risk and not relevant, but I’m afraid if the info is out there, it’s out there.

I don’t get the bit about 1222 AB - it says all four of them own a quarter each of the company but that Benny Andersson holds all the shares? Has something got a bit lost in translation there? You can’t have four-way ownership if only one person (via their company) holds all the shares?

Interesting (for the nerds like me) that Agnetha’s company is still active. It was credited on I Stand Alone and My Colouring Book, but there was no mention of it on “A” (how time flies - that album is 10 years old soon).

And it was a Wednesday, with the English version following on the 19th (a Monday).

It also means that Åh, Vilka Tider is also 50 years old. The only commercially-released ABBA song never recorded in English, and so consequently most people forget about it or don’t even think of it as an ABBA recording. To be fair, it’s quite rare in terms of physical releases, usually only getting an airing in box sets (2005 Complete Studio Recordings, 2004 Japanese 30th CD box, 2014 vinyl singles box). It was even missed off the deluxe issue of Ring Ring in 2013, even though they saw fit to include tracks not actually performed by ABBA.

She’s My Kind of Girl was the b-side of the English version of Ring Ring in Scandinavia, but internationally it was Rock ‘n’ Roll Band. She’s My Kind of Girl was a 1969 Björn and Benny recording that was included on international editions of the Ring Ring album. Rock ‘n’ Roll Band had also originally been a Björn and Benny recording with a few slightly different lyrics, before being re-recorded for Ring Ring.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Band was the b-side of both versions of Ring Ring in the UK. Four further tracks were included on Greatest Hits in 1976, leaving the remaining six songs unreleased until 1988 when a cheap Castle Communications compilation, ABBA The Collection Vol 2, included the Scandinavian configuration of Ring Ring on Sides 2 and 4. Sides 1 and 3 included 11 tracks from ABBA Live. As this album included the Swedish version of Ring Ring, it still left She’s My Kind of Girl unreleased in the UK. The one-disc CD version of the album omitted both Rock ‘n’ Roll Band and the Swedish version of Ring Ring.







Interestingly (for nerds like me anyway) there is no mention of the tracks being licensed from CBS, who were still ABBA’s UK record company licensee at that point. Instead, only ABBA’s British music publisher, Bocu Music, is credited. This might be because CBS never released either Ring Ring or ABBA Live, but six tracks from Ring Ring had been released by them.

(The Collection Vol 1 was merely a compilation of singles and album tracks. This time CBS Records was credited, who were sub-licensing ABBA out to all and sundry by that point).

There are six versions of Ring Ring - English, Swedish, German, Spanish, UK Remix and US Remix. There’s also a four minute 22 second medley of the Swedish, Spanish and German versions issued on the 1994 Thank You For The Music 4-CD set.

For Waterloo there are five - English, Swedish, German, French and Alternate Mix (the latter of which didn’t surface until 2005). There’s also the live version from 1979 but I wouldn’t count that (possibly two different live versions if the one on the 1986 ABBA Live album is a different date from the 2014 Live at Wembley. Either way, they’re mixed differently). Similarly there’s a medley from 1994 of the French and Swedish versions.

Linda Ulvaeus was born on 23 February, so that’s less than two weeks after their Melodifestival appearance. I love how they immortalised Agnetha’s pregnancy by including a photo from this session on the back cover of Ring Ring (album). I think/am assuming the front cover photo was taken after Linda was born?

Somewhere the culture changed to covering up pregnancies? Agnetha is only shown above the waist in The Name of the Game video, and there’s a version of the Take A Chance On Me single where the cover photo has been adjusted to erase all trace of it.

Bananarama’s video for I Can’t Help It has them all only filmed above the waist because of Siobhan Fahey’s late-stage pregnancy (she was about to exit the group), though an earlier stage of the pregnancy was visible in the video for previous single Love In The First Degree. It took ABBA’s fellow Swede Neneh Cherry to make it OK to be pregnant in pop again.

Johnny, was that really necessary? It seems to have come from no where. I’m leaving your comment on in case Hometime wants to respond.

I tend to prefer whichever version of a song I heard first, be it a cover version or the original. Happens less often these days as most new cover versions I hear are of songs I’m very familiar with.

Not sure if it was Stock-Aitken-Waterman that started it, but their formula tended to be that each of their acts released one cover version per album. Bananarama (Venus, Nathan Jones), Rick Astley (When I Fall In Love), Kylie (The Locomotion, Tears on my Pillow, Give Me Just A Little More Time, Celebration). This then became the formula for any manufactured act since. The worst culprit that sticks in my mind is Girls Aloud - I’ll Stand By You. This added nothing to the song and is what I consider a lazy cover version. As forgettable as they get.

There’s plenty of bias here but I like Kate Bush’s version of Rocket Man. It was for an Elton John covers album and she did it because she was a genuine fan.