ABBA Gold 40th Anniversary Edition + The Singles – Celebrating 40 Years With 40 Singles

ABBA GOLD
40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
+
THE SINGLES
ABBA CELEBRATES 40 YEARS WITH 40 SINGLES

The year 2014 marks the 40th Anniversary of ABBA’s spectacular win at the Eurovision Song Contest with the unforgettable Waterloo, to date the most popular and successful Eurovision winner of all time. It was a groundbreaking moment for the group and marked the start of their career as one of the biggest pop bands of all time.

Throughout 2014 Polar Music International is celebrating the anniversary with a whole raft of special releases. Following the release of the Deluxe Edition of Waterloo, ABBA Gold is being re-released in a special edition, a 3-CD set, including a selection of B sides tracklisted and hand-picked by ABBA. Next up comes ABBA The Singles, a superb boxed set, comprising 40 vinyl singles originally released during the period 1972-1982.

ABBA GOLD – 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

In this 40th Anniversary year, it is difficult to imagine a time when the music of ABBA wasn’t a regular soundtrack to our everyday lives, but when the group split up in 1982 a 10 year hiatus was to follow. ABBA was almost banished from the airwaves and their albums were listed as out of print and disappeared from the shops.

“We were convinced it was all over,” says Benny Andersson today. “We figured on royalties coming in during 1983, maybe until 1984, but after that? No way.”

“In the 1980s we were off the radar,” says Björn Ulvaeus. “The general attitude was that ABBA was totally uncool. If, like me, you’ve got poor self-confidence, it was hard to not figure that’s it. It’s over.”

As everyone knows now, they could not have been more wrong, when in 1992 the rebirth of ABBA’s music began in earnest. U2 included a cover of Dancing Queen on the Zoo TV Tour and when Nirvana played that year’s Reading Festival, Kurt Cobain personally requested ABBA cover band, Björn Again as their support.

That same year scripts were being put together for two Australian movies: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel’s Wedding, both featuring ABBA songs as an integral part of the plot.

The 1992 ABBA revival peaked when Erasure’s tribute EP, Abba-esque hit the top of the charts, rousing the record label Polygram to release the compilation album, ABBA Gold, with Dancing Queen as the opening track, at the end of 1992.

ABBA Gold has currently sold some 30 million copies around the world and in the UK last year, it overtook The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper on the all-time best-seller list to reach Number Two (Number One is Queen’s Greatest Hits).

BUY GOLD AT AMAZON

ABBA – THE SINGLES

Of the 40 vinyl singles offered here, 31 are the singles planned and conceived by ABBA’s Swedish record company, Polar Music, which were issued in Sweden and/or the rest of Scandinavia: from the debut People Need Love through legendary hits such as Mamma Mia, Dancing Queen, Knowing Me, Knowing You, Take A Chance On Me, Chiquitita and The Winner Take It All to the final single, Under Attack. The remaining 9 singles in the set were only released by ABBA’s local record companies around the world.

Five of the additional singles here are the German versions of Ring Ring and Waterloo, the French version of Waterloo and the Spanish language versions of Chiquitita and I Have A Dream (Spanish title Estoy Soñando). The West German single Honey Honey/Ring Ring features a 1974 remix of Ring Ring, which also featured as an A-side on singles in Great Britain and Australia. The remaining three selections are ABBA songs that have become very popular over the ensuing decades, but which were originally only released as singles in a few countries. They are the Portuguese Happy New Year; the UK 12-inch, Lay All Your Love On Me (presented here on a 7-inch format) and the Australian release of When All Is Said and Done.

The sleeve and label of each single in this set are exact replicas of the original issues, with just the 9 singles not originally released by Polar Music being given new Polar labels, each corresponding to the design used by Polar during the era when each single was released. The sleeves for those singles have also been slightly modified.

This celebration of ABBA as unsurpassable hit makers is being released as a strictly limited edition.

Although Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid ”Frida” Lyngstad had been releasing records as a group before, they only began using the name ABBA during the Waterloo era. Originally formed in 1972, the four members went their separate ways in 1982, but ABBA still continue to sell more than 2 million albums each year. In their 10-year career they released eight studio albums, which tracked their development and maturation as songwriters and performers, as well as their well-documented personal lives. Interest in their music today is perhaps stronger than ever as a whole new audience discovers their music through films and the hugely successful musicals, Chess and Mamma Mia, which has been seen by a staggering 54 million people to date.

BUY 40/40 AT AMAZON