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ABBA still have faith in you – but is it any good?

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So, after 40 years it has finally happened. ABBA have done what they said they would never do, and a new album and all sorts of virtual shenanigans are on the way. The much touted and delayed announcement has been made with a great deal of hoopla, and there is new music to be enjoyed / reviled depending on your perspective. I’ll be honest – I love ABBA. They form such an indelible part of my younger days that I find hard to be objective about them. The fact that all four of them are still here, still talking to each other, and now making new music together has to be a cause for some celebration.

So are the new songs any good? Is the legacy intact? On the first couple of listens I’d say so. Lead single I Still Have Faith in You starts slowly and builds to a crescendo of sheer ABBA-ness. It’s kitsch, it’s corny, it’s bloody great!

Other opinions are, I believe, available.

3

Comments

  3. Did they ever say they would never do a new album? Not sure a split was ever announced. Long wait for a follow up to the excellent The Visitors album though 😉

  4. It’s in the I know Him So Well category of pop whereby the singer is in a lone spotlight reflecting on whether she can go through with whatever challenge is coming her way.

    I think over time it will be accepted in the same way that Free As a Bird was. They’re not pretending they’ve still “got it as” pop stars. When all the vocals kick in, it’s great.

    It will be interesting to see what the hologram shows will be like. I would be ecstatic if they performed this song live, as they are now, as the opening and then an hour or so of hits as the holograms – and then came on at the end for two or three closing numbers as the encore, live.

    If the show was just the holograms with no live presence from any of them I’d rather just watch it at home. There needs to be the emotional punch of having even just Bjorn and Benny there in person to give the shows the feeling of a special event.

  6. Oh, my…it’s everything I hoped it would be. Those voices…*shivers* I watched the live stream…tears were shed. Album was pre-ordered. Fingers are ready for the tour pre-sale online frenzy.

  10. I was listening on R5 Drive and the excellent but curmudgeonly Tony Livesey said something along the lines of ‘it’s taken them 40 years to write that??’. I rather enjoyed the song – I mean at 70 you aren’t going to be doing an upbeat disco number (unless you are Madonna or Cher that is).

  14. I have to say both songs are fairly miraculous, not the greatest Abba songs ever, but after 40 years this is incredible. Somehow Agnetha and Frida now sound more Swedish then they did before!

    • I’m not really sure what “sound even more Swedish” means; it’s not as if most of us get to regularly hear many Swedes talking in English. Greta Thunberg, maybe? Ingrid Bergman? Zlatan Ibrahimovic?

      I suspect it probably means they sound JUST like the chef from the Muppets.

  15. It’s a meh from me regarding the tracks; the first being slightly better than the second.
    The “abbatars” at the end of the first video looks creepy AF! Wax figures come alive to feast on the souls of the living…

    • Hilarious comment, Locust. The whole thing sounds like a new Nordic Noir horror movie:

      “The Abbatars from the Abbatoir.”

      Gimme gimme gimme a corpse after midnight!

      Ooh, see that girl
      Watch that scene
      Digging the zombie queen!

      By a weird coincidence, several new rock clubs in Stockholm have recently opened in the old Slaughterhouse Area.

      Come on Benny! Enough of this hologram nonsense. Get back behind your piano with BAO and entertain us all and have some fun. It is easy to see how much he enjoys playing live in this clip.

      The Benny Andersson Orchestra has been going for 20 years now and are very popular in Sweden. They travel with their own dancefloor so every gig is a dance party.

      But if he wants to experiment with new tech, I wish him luck!

      • Oh dear…they played the new tracks on radio today – every bloody hour, all day long! It gave me flashbacks to my childhood when their ubiquity drove me nuts and was the biggest reason why I never became a fan back then (that, and already being a fan of Stevie Wonder, which to my taste then – and now – was vastly superior). I grew up to like some of their songs a lot as an adult, but I don’t have any warm fuzzy nostalgic feelings for ABBA.

  17. In other news, tickets for Bjorn Again’s Nov/Dec tour go on sale later this morning.

    Nov 25 Poole Lighthouse
    Nov 27 Liverpool Academy
    Nov 29 Glasgow Academy
    Dec 01 Leeds Academy
    Dec 02 Manchester Ritz
    Dec 03 Newcastle Boiler Shop
    Dec 04 Nottingham Trent Uni
    Dec 06 Cambridge Junction
    Dec 08 Birmingham Institute
    Dec 09 London Indigo
    Dec 10 Guildford G Live
    Dec 11 Cardiff Tramshed
    Dec 12 Bristol Academy
    Dec 16 Stroud Subscription Rooms

    No holograms required.

  18. Abba, Beatles, Abba, Beatles, Aaaargh
    The soundtrack at this old folks home is all getting a bit too Gold FM. I’m off for some cutting edge* spiky young folks music, and will see you back in chains n/w. Keep my commode warm.
    *Hank Wangford (81)

  19. They do divide the AW crowd, don’t they…? Personally it wouldn’t worry me if I never heard them again, and that first song is fairly dreary to my ears, but clearly they are loved and admired by some, so that’s fine. This whole project will be a roaring success and, somewhat paradoxically, I’m pleased they’ve done something new together. You only have to look at the number of ABBA tribute acts to know how perennially popular they are. I have to say though that the animated section at the end is a bit creepy.

  20. It’s fine, that new song. Sounds like Abba, and if you had told me it was one of their lesser known songs from back in the day I would have believed you. A little dull to my tastes, but will probably please the Abba fans as much as Free As A Bird pleased me as a Beatles fan, so that’s all good.

  22. I love the first one, got a bit teary when all the vocals kicked in. Great video too apart from the abbatars. Not so struck with the second, and as for the lyrics hinting at said abbatars “I’ve been reloaded, I’m not the same, now and then combined” I agree with Locust’s hilarious comment on the wax dolls. It may be ok for youngsters not so used to seeing Abba in their heyday but for those familiar with their actual faces, now and then, it is really pretty creepy.

  24. It’s weird with Abba…I can’t say I really like them or much of their catalogue but the songs I do like, I REALLY like. SOS, Dancing Queen and The Winner Takes It All, if you’re asking…

  25. Just been reading Will Hodgkinson’s 20 top Abba songs in the Times today. Some weird choices, Fernando at no 5, Honey Honey no 6 and no mention at all of The Name of the Game which is one of my favourites.
    At least Dancing Queen is in its rightful no 1 place.

  26. I Still Have Faith In You is a slightly slowed down The Winner Takes It All. Even the “money moment” crescendo. Its ABBA, its new and its wonderful. I had ABBA Gold on at the weekend in readiness. The perfection of those songs down to every last detail should render them soul less but its those voices, thise harmonies, those little moments of production and musicality that render them perfect. The overplayed and slightly ruined by association to that musical Mama Mia is the perfect example among many others. These songs will join them because the voices still work and the production and musicality remains….

  27. I haven’t had time to hear the new songs but if they are anywhere near as good as this one, I’m IN.

    I doubt the naysayers will be swayed but get a load of Story Of A Heart by Benny ‘n’ Bjorn

    • I can perfectly understand why I am never going to groove to Miles Davis. I am the first to admit I “rather like” Bowie than actually worship him. Most “Classical” Music passes me by – I Am Unworthy.
      I simply cannot listen to The Beatles anymore – I was done with them a Long, Long Time Ago. Magnificent but redundant.
      Saying all that, I love Pop Music. Give me a catchy tune, a little riff to hang my hat on – I’m there. Lorde’s latest album is a banger, a truly magnificent pop album. It’s only second this year to Lana watching chemtrails.
      But, and this is a But the size of Antarctica, “Abba?????”. Have you all gone totally completely effing buggering insane?
      Abba – “Them Two Movies” are fantastic. They are fantastic, I love them movies, because the whole premise is based upon the absolute and irrefutable fact that Abba are Naff with a capital N.
      I rest my case, my head and my hat

      • You don’t seem to hear the radio or any music much in the shops here in London at least any more. When you see films from the seventies or eighties and there is a scene in a shop, there is often something playing in the background but now it’s rare. None of the big supermarkets or other high street shops that I go to play anything. There’s a local general household goods shop that aways has a Punjabi channel on playing traditional music, but that’s about it.

        It used to be hard to avoid hearing the top twenty, even if you didn’t know the names of the performers. Now you have to search it out.

        • Isn’t that because of PRS rules? I think these days you can’t simply have music radio playing in a shop, you need a license. Places like Asda and Co-op get around this by having their own radio stations.

          It might be cheaper to hire a feller to play the spoons. That would certainly stop people dawdling in the aisles.

  29. I just stumbled across this: a Swedish TV interview with ABBA on the occasion of their very first concert in the UK which took place in Birmingham, followed by a short interview with in the studio with the lads.

    The interviewer dares to ask the band how they react to comments that their music is “middle of the road.” Frida is quick to comment that they are doing the music that they believe in.

  31. As someone mentions above, they had a fair old number of fillers and a few total “avoid or delete” in amongst the Gold.

    I am a fan and the new songs are not up to their best, sadly. “Still Have Faith In You” is the Abba of “Thank You For The Music,” rather than the amazing major/minor belters of the Imperial phase or the sad “dance through your tears” divorce Abba of their other Imperial phase.

    • To be fair, I suspect that for Agnetha and Annifrid, being invited to roll back the years and sing more angsty songs about disintegrating relationships wouldn’t be too enticing a prospect.

  32. Liking the new songs and looking forward to the album. The abbatars are an amazing creative/technological endeavour, but leave me cold. One aspect I don’t understand is that the body movements are modelled on the actual members of ABBA as they are now, not as they were. Surely there are huge differences in posture and movement over forty years? So won’t the abbatars appear young but move in a penshionable style?

    In other news, Elon Musk’s dance bot appears remarkably human:

  34. Compare and contrast, ABBA release two tracks to pretty much universal acclaim (or as much as you could hope to get in these polarised days) Clapton and Morrison release the same old boring dirge that hasn’t changed for eons and meh. It’s only their looney anti-scientific thinking that gets them noticed. What a couple of losers.

    • Well, I bought another Bjorn Again live CD (this one’s from their 1998 RAH gig, the VHS of which is on Youtube) for a fiver.

      And I’m going to get tix for the BA December gigs. What better way to restart my gig life?

  40. None of you lot are going to like this, but I reckon ABBA are more loved and more a part of daily life in this country than any other band, including the Beatles. From the perspective of a guy who works in a record shop, there is much much more interest from the punters in this than anything I can remember for a long time

    • I wouldn’t describe myself as an ABBA fan, but I’ve danced to their records many many many times. People love them, they make people happy. They’ve never been cool, and there’s blessedly no build up of quasi-academic bollocks justifying their music, and they’re all the better for it.

      These gigs are sure to be a colossal party. You’d have to be proper sad sack not to at least half want to be in there feeling the beat from the tambourine.

    • Abba Gold was #19 in the 2020 year-end chart, 19 years after it was released, and has notched up 1000 weeks on the album chart (it wasn’t in the top 100 for a handful of weeks).

      The only Fabs LP to get close is Sgt Pepper, and that had a 25-year head start.

    • Don’t disagree. They have usurped The Beatles and are the new Fab Four and indeed Toppermost of the Poppermost. Nobody in that age range is having singles hits but they will as their appeal is from teenagers to 70 somethings. Of course not possible for The Beatles to come back from 40 (or 50) years away, the mid 90s efforts were ok, but the Lennon demos were poorly recorded and the technology of the time couldn’t mask that.

  41. I don’t disagree. I was 6 when The Beatles broke up but Abba were there all through my teenage and later years, so of course they mean more to me. It’s not really a competition though, is it?

    That was supposed to be a reply to Kid D, BTW

  42. I am conflicted. The 7″ single has no b-side (lyrics etched, apparently) and costs a tenner. But it is half-speed mastered at Abbey Road by Miles Showell, so will sound great.

    Still better value than the two separate one-track CD singles, though.

      • Ten pounds for a one-sided single, no less.

        I dunno if these youngsters know about vinyl records, but you can turn them over and have another song on the other side. Whatever will they think of next?

        And CD singles can also have more than one track.

        • Jeez I’m getting old. I accept it but it just seems wrong. It must have been living at home that meant I could devote a larger proportion of my wage to buying music. I wonder what teenagers think of spending a tenner on a single?

          • Out of interest, I tried the £14 price of a CD in 1986, which came out at £42 in today’s money. That £5.99 album I bought on vinyl would be £18, so not that far off.

            I am very dull.

            • I’m not quite sure I buy the fact that, say, a CD in the 80s was the equivalent of over £40 today, or indeed that LPs when I started out buying in 1963 (32/6d) were £35 in today’s money. I certainly didn’t buy many, but I was a 13 year old schoolboy with somewhat limited disposable dosh! I suppose I can’t argue with the facts, but these websites merely apply inflation – is that the whole story?

          • I had a paper round in 1978, earning about 1.50 a week. that would sometimes go towards marked down former chart hits in Woolworths, probably discounted to around 50p. Guess I bought 4 or 5 LPs a year in those days (similar to today actually!).

            Then 2 years later I was privileged to get a full student grant, from memory about 55 quid a week, 35 went immediately on student lodging that included breakfast and dinner. The rest on lunch, snacks, beer, transport, concerts and (occasional) vinyl/cassettes. A lot of records from friends were also taped (“home taping is killing music”)

  43. Having listened to the OP song a few times, I let it play again this afternoon, the track losing some of its initial novelty, becoming more comfortable, mote absorbed.

    As a song written for the band, it’s reflective on their shared history, a girding of their loins for another launch into the public sphere, a rallying call for the singers (in this case, mainly Anni-Frid) to take confidence in their still strong, if well-worn voices.

    And it’s a call out for their fans – we are all still here – enjoying the wonder of music, the spectacle of melody played and listened to loud and with pleasure.

    And beyond that, it’s a song for aged couples, friends everywhere – an eternal ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ pooling of shared memories – perfect for diamond wedding anniversaries, perennial school reunions and care home singalongs. As ever, ABBA write for themselves, yet also for everyone – universal experiences made singable and hummable.

  44. So the people lumping on are:
    1. People who have never been that interested in pop music and to whom The Beatles in the 60s were the anti-Christ, or,
    2. Dodgers.
    Funnily enough, I think I prefer the former!

    I have got that right, yeah?

    Curiously you never hear from people who matter, namely any rock ‘n’ rollers still with us, Paul, Bob, Mick etc.
    I’m sticking with them.

    • I know that sometimes the Afterword community can be cynical about contemporary music, but I would strongly recommend that everyone takes a few minutes to listen to this hauntingly familiar effort from the new Drake album.

      Good to see the legends of today paying proper tribute to the true innovators of yesteryear.

      • Es are good, Es are good
        Eazy M**********n’ Es are good!
        If the objective was to make me buy a bottle of Wet or a pair of shorts with a very suggestive long pendulous string, ya got me, Drake.

            • I LOVE this. The pared-down arrangement really gives proper spotlight to the classic songwriting and daring use of medieval chord structures.

              Sometimes I think I might have grown weary of Right Said Fred. That after all these years, all the many thousands of listens, the multiple books, mono box sets, rarities compendiums, song-by-song podcast examinations and the time I forced my kids to listen to all their songs with me in alphabetical order, they can surprise me no longer.

              Then I hear something like this, and it rekindles once more that first electric thrill of encountering The Fred, and reassures me that their musical legacy will stride on, infinite, for so long as voices remain to sing their legend, until the Sun finally goes supernova and all that’s left is the bassline from Sexy Bum, reverberating endlessly across the cosmos; a last glorious vestige of the human civilization that for one brief moment flickered into being before being expunged forever.

              • Well, we AWers all know a song is best performed by a breathy female vocalist and/or an acoustic guitar. Saint Etienne manage one of them, at least.

                And Flowered Up bring a man dressed as a sunflower to the party. And drugs. Lots of drugs.

    • I think it’s the Super Trouper album version, with another album track, On and On and On (another track suped-up by Bjorn Again) on the b-side.

      As far as I know, the only actual 12″ remix was Voulez-Vous.

      {Cough} BurningTheGround {cough} dot {cough} net.

      • Perhaps they were around a little too early to really go for the 12” remixes.

        Gimme Gimme Gimme was lifted by Madonna of course because it’s a bloody sublime slab of late 70s disco – a Moroder-mungus glitterball banger of a choon and no mistake.

      • That’s the one. Gave it a clean and a play. What a song. I’ve said it before but I reckon it invented what I call the “Ibiza Drop” between a harmonically perfect “what can I dooooo” beat, beat, beat, whoosh….. “Don’t go changing your emotion…” brilliant.

  50. I made a prediction on the old Word forum in about 2009, that Little Boots (Victoria Hesketh) would become a world-class session musician. She’s the keyboard player in ‘virtual ABBA’. The other prediction I made was that Florence Welch would take up an acting career staring in Dr. Who. – I stand by that. I can totally see it happening.

    I was roundly shouted down at the time.

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