| ABBALP | ||
| Abba The Album | ||
| This Vinyl is graded EXCELLENT on my grading system. The Cover is graded EXCELLENT on my grading system. previous owner name written on cover ABBA's fifth album continued its phenomenal international success, featuring the U.K. #1s "The Name of the Game" and "Take a Chance on Me, " and achieving ABBA's highest ever showing in the U.S. LP charts: it reached the Top 20 and sold a million copies in six months, despite being one of their more uneven releases. The Album was unusually progressive by the standards of this group, opening with the decidedly dramatic, six-minute long synthesizer-dominated "Eagle" (almost an art-rock track), before giving way to the hit "Take A Chance On Me." Even the latter, with it luminous acapella opening, was rather bold in its exploiting of the group's established strengths. Despite it hit status, "The Name of the Game" was never as strong or interesting a cut as "Take A Chance On Me, " and there are better tracks surrounding it, including "Move On, " which has a better beat and more impressive harmonizing (although the introduction seems, unintentionally, almost a parody of that Les Crane spoken-word hit of the early 1970's, "Child of the Universe"), and "Hole In Your Soul" (which is a rare guitar showcase for Lasse Wellander's lead electric playing). "Girl With The Golden Hair, " billed as "three scenes from a mini-musical, " shows ABBA move into the realm of Broadway-style material, courtesy of Andersson and Ulvaeus's aspirations to compose in that direction. All Music Guide | |
e most commercially successful pop group of the 1970s, the origins of the Swedish superstars ABBA dated back to 1966, when keyboardist and vocalist Benny Andersson, a onetime member of the popular beat outfit the Hep Stars, first teamed with guitarist and vocalist Bjorn Ulvaeus, the leader of the folk-rock unit the Hootenanny Singers. The two performers began composing songs together and handling session and production work for Polar Music/Union Songs, a publishing company owned by Stig Anderson, himself a prolific songwriter throughout the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time, both Andersson and Ulvaeus worked on projects with their respective girlfriends: Ulvaeus had become involved with vocalist Agnetha Faltskog, a performer with a recent Number One Swedish hit, "I Was So in Love," under her belt, while Andersson began seeing Anni-Frid Lyngstad, a onetime jazz singer who rose to fame by winning a national talent contest.In 1971, Faltskog ventured into theatrical work, accepting the role of Mary Magdalene in a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar; her cover of the musical's "Don't Know How to Love Him" became a significant hit. The following year, the duo of Andersson and Ulvaeus scored a massive international hit with "People Need Love," which featured Faltskog and Lyngstad on backing vocals. The record's success earned them an invitation to enter the Swedish leg of the 1973 Eurovision song contest, where, under the unwieldy name of Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha & Frida, they submitted "Ring Ring," which proved extremely popular with audiences but placed only third in the judges' ballots.The next year, rechristened ABBA (a suggestion from Stig Anderson and an acronym of the members' first names), the quartet submitted the single "Waterloo," and became the first Swedish act to win the Eurovision competition. | ||
