Not only is it a pristine example of their powers, but the lyrics also clear up any mystery as to why the band disbanded in the first place. It’s as if all four members re-emerged from the spaceship in Close Encounters of The Third Kind with all of their pop instincts perfectly preserved. With 28 million plays already since it showed up on Spotify a few months back, it’s safe to say that ABBA fans have been more than enthusiastic about the Voyage single “Don’t Shut Me Down.” And for good reason, as the song contains all the hallmarks of what made them such an otherworldly hit-making force. We took a look at their very first hit-now let’s take a peek at their most recent one. Many of their hits would improve upon this formula, but “Ring Ring” set the high bar that ABBA would work towards for the rest of their long career.
The song injects equal parts of Beatles or Kinks proto-riff rock with elements of Phil Spector girl-group harmonies and romance. Both Andersson and Ulvaeus handle more vocals than they would further down the line, but it’s songs like the lead-off title track “Ring Ring,” sung by Fältskog and Lyngstad, that exhibited the formula they would strike gold with on their next few albums. Like a group of jewel thieves who got nabbed on their first attempt, but left a clear-cut path for themselves back into the vault when they blew the joint, 1973’s Ring Ring showed glints of promise. If you listen to ABBA’s debut album, you get the sense that the group hadn’t really sorted out how they would conquer the world just yet. We’ve cataloged ABBA’s best songs here at Paste in the past, but for those newcomers who need more of an overall primer on the band, here are the 10 best introductory tracks to get you onboard. It’s a move that is both very puzzling and extremely ABBA before they power down their legendary hit-making machine. After all, the announcement of Voyage came with the sad news that the group would finally be breaking up-that is, after one last Tron-style “ABBA Arena” tour that will have each band member digitally de-aged as holograms to “perform” songs both new and old.
With bands like ELO and even Steely Dan getting the poptimist treatment, ABBA deserve to be given all of the flowers that are rightly theirs while they are still around. With eight full-length albums from 1973 to 1981-all stuffed to the gills with bonafide hits-it’s hard to think of many other groups who have changed the face of pop music over the past 50 years quite like ABBA. Add their initials together and you not only get the band name “ABBA,” but you also get a group who have sold nearly 400 million records worldwide, with their 1992 greatest-hits compilation Gold setting a record for remaining on the U.K. The group started in the early ’70s as a way to showcase the talents of songwriting partners Benny Andersson and Björn Alvaeus, with their then-romantic partners Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad on vocals. But while famed groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson all hold these monolithic and immovable places within the pop-music consciousness, ABBA are a group that strangely needs a reintroduction to many who are only familiar with some of their biggest hits. The wait is finally over, as Voyage has officially hit streaming platforms for pop obsessives to devour. Fans of the Swedish pop titans ABBA the world over were blown away when the group re-emerged from a long hibernation to announce they would be reuniting for a brand new album, their first in nearly 40 years.
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