Thursday 29 July 2010

Muziek Expres, 1978: ABBA – The Album album review

In the scope of the trilogy of movie-album-book, after ABBA – The Movie, ABBA – The Album has now been released. Obviously, commercially speaking it’s a completely well-thought-out product (who would have expected anything different?), but still I’m posing a couple of question marks at the ongoing intellectualisation of the ABBA sound. Where – according to me – their biggest forte has always been the utmost simplicity – that in fact wasn’t all that simple at all – now the foursome is bringing in more and more strategic tricks.
My prediction that ‘The Name Of The Game’ was not going to make it, came true. Therefore, I safely dare to claim that this album will only achieve high sales figures because ABBA has become such an institution over the course of the years. In other words, if the name ABBA wouldn’t have such a magical ring to it, ‘The Album’ would never be the chartbuster that it will undoubtedly be now. All of this doesn’t take away from the fact that the album contains a couple of beautiful songs. The choruses of ‘Move On’ and ‘Thank You For The Music’ even start exceptionally beautiful.

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