Wednesday 29 October 2008

Dagblad voor Noord-Limburg, 1984: ABBA-album released only in our country

A Dutch newspaper article about the release of a compilation album, designed exclusively for the Dutch market. The record company was eager to release a new ABBA-product and since there were no new recordings available, they opted for a compilation album. The choice of songs was interesting; the album included rare B-sides such as Elaine and Cassandra, as well as the edited single versions of Frida’s To Turn The Stone and Agnetha’s Wrap Your Arms Around Me. The album was also available on CD for a short period of time.
Out of sight, out of mind, is how the old saying goes. As it turns out, this is not always applicable, considering what’s happening with ABBA at the moment. Record company Polydor, apparently tired of the fact that there’s still no ABBA-news, asked and got permission to release a special ABBA-compilation, titled ‘From ABBA With Love’.

And that is rather special, because the ABBA-clan vetoes a lot of initiatives, that don’t originate from themselves. Alas, this compilation-album will exclusively be available in our country. It includes a lot of well-known ABBA-hits, such as ‘One Of Us’, ‘The Day Before You Came’, ‘The Winner Takes It All’ and ‘Head Over Heels’.
To give the album the appearance that it has something new to offer, it also includes two songs – ‘Elaine’ and ‘Cassandra’ – that haven’t been included on an album before. They are, you guessed it, single B-sides. For the time being, we can’t expect something really new from the ABBA-front. An ABBA group-album is on their schedule, but it will definitely not be released this year. As reported, Björn and Benny are working together on a musical double-album. But that won’t be released in our country until next year either. In September, Frida will release a new solo-album, on which several big names from the pop-world will co-operate.

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