![]() "No clogs, please," stiletto pioneer and clogophobe Christian Louboutin pleaded on the Fat Mascara podcast in September 2016, just days before British designer Christopher Kane unveiled his groundbreaking spring/summer 2017 collaboration with Crocs: geode-encrusted versions of the rubbery clogs formerly associated with gardening grandmothers. Beau Brummell, the original dandy and arbiter of men's fashion in Regency England, is said to have had "a perfect abhorrence" of the protruding and protective wooden-soled shoe, according to his biographer, while 1970s Swedish pop sensations ABBA were such fervent fans that they started their own clog line. I never said myself that ABBA was never going to happen again, but I can tell you now: this is it.The clog has long ranked among the world's most divisive footwear. “This is it,” Andersson told The Guardian when the new album was released. Worse than the uncertainty of four decades of silence, it is a musical denouement that cuts deep. The downside? After the album’s release, the band will disband again, this time for good. The upside? The album will be followed by a virtual concert experience, using “ABBA-tar” avatars, first in London, and then to tour worldwide. And the irresistible rhythm that suffuses their most addictive music: Waterloo, Dancing Queen, Money Money Money and Mamma Mia. The symbiotic communion of melancholy and joy that seemed to underscore their very best work: Slipping Through My Fingers, Hasta Mañana, Fernando and The Winner Takes It All. ![]() On the new recordings, however, Fältskog’s voice is richer and more mature, slightly lower in register (so much so that one British reviewer mixed up Lyngstad and Fältskog’s work when the singles were released) and both voices sound less at ease with English lyrics, a natural enough side effect of four decades spent away from touring the English-speaking world.Īt the same time, there remains something definitively ABBA about the assembly of new material for Voyage. In their original iteration, one of the band’s most powerful weapons was the smooth blend of Lyngstad’s mezzo-soprano and Fältskog’s soprano voices. In the Arms of Rosalita became Chiquitita, turning “happy, as you can be / in the arms of Rosalita” into “try once more, like you did before / sing a new song Chiquitita.” And Happy Hawaii (which was released) and Memory Lane (which was not) were both later reworked into one of the ’s bigger hits, Why Did It Have to Be Me?Īnd while ABBA’s “sound” seems to have survived intact - if there is anything in the new material to criticise, it would be that it is acoustically connected more to the 1970s and 1980s than to the 2020s, no doubt intentionally so - it is also true to say that in four decades the sound of the band, and in particular its two female singers, has also changed. Monsieur, Monsieur became My Love, My Life. Others were either given new lyrics, or new titles, and repackaged. And Get On the Carousel, never released on an album, can be heard in ABBA: The Movie. I Am the City, recorded in 1982 for an unproduced album, finally made it out on the 1993 compilation album More ABBA Gold, and Put On Your White Sombrero, intended for the 1980 album Super Trouper, was released with the 1994 boxed set Thank You for the Music. Over the years some of those lost songs have surfaced. Some of their best work: Rock Me, Does Your Mother Know and Man in the Middle.) ![]() (Though it’s generally believed the men did not sing lead on ABBA songs, they often did. And unlike the first two new singles, which had new studio recordings from singers Anni-Frid Lyngstad (Frida) and Agnetha Fältskog, the vocals for Just a Notion were recorded in September, 1978.Īnother, Bumble Bee, is almost certainly derived from an unreleased ABBA song, Free as a Bumble Bee, written and recorded as a demo in 1978 with vocals by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. Just a Notion, for example, was originally written and produced for the group’s 1979 album Voulez-Vous. Revealingly, however, not all the music on the album is brand new. ![]() As first-albums-in-40-years go it’s sometimes hard to predict, but there is every indication it will be a hit: it has clocked up close to 120,000 pre-orders in the UK alone. The next piece in that jigsaw is the album itself: the three songs already released, plus seven more: When You Danced with Me, Little Things, I Can Be That Woman, Keep an Eye on Dan, Bumble Bee, No Doubt About It and Ode to Freedom. ![]()
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