The Visitors is the eighth and final studio album by Swedish pop group ABBA, released on 30 November 1981.
With The Visitors, ABBA took several steps away from the "lighter" pop music they had recorded previously and the album is often regarded as a more complex and mature effort. The opening track, "The Visitors", with its ominous synthesizer sounds and the distinctive lead vocal by Frida, announced a change in musical style. With Benny and Frida going their separate ways, the pain of splitting up was explored yet again in "When All is Said and Done". The major hit single on the album, "One of Us" also depicted the end of a love story. Elsewhere there were current cold war themes-highly topical at the time-and further songs of isolation and regret.
The Visitors album was one of the first records to be recorded and mixed digitally, and was the first in history to be manufactured on the new CD format in 1982 on Atlantic. The Visitors has been reissued in digitally remastered form three times-first in 1997, then in 2001 and again in 2005 as part of The Complete Studio Recordings box set.
The Visitors Deluxe Edition was released on 23 April 2012. As with previous releases in the Deluxe Edition series, this version of ABBA’s final album offers a DVD of archive material along with CD bonus tracks - including the demo medley ‘From A Twinkling Star To A Passing Angel’, the first previously unreleased ABBA recordings since 1994.The Visitors is the eighth and final studio album by Swedish pop group ABBA, released on 30 November 1981.
With The Visitors, ABBA took several steps away from the "lighter" pop music they had recorded previously and the album is often regarded as a more complex and mature effort. The opening track, "The Visitors", with its ominous synthesizer sounds and the distinctive lead vocal by Frida, announced a change in musical style. With Benny and Frida going their separate ways, the pain of splitting up was explored yet again in "When All is Said and Done". The major hit single on the album, "One of Us" also depicted the end of a love story. Elsewhere there were current cold war themes-highly topical at the time-and further songs of isolation and regret.
The Visitors album was one of the first records to be recorded and mixed digitally, and was the first in history to be manufactured on the new CD format in 1982 on Atlantic. The Visitors has been reissued in digitally remastered form three times-first in 1997, then in 2001 and again in 2005 as part of The Complete Studio Recordings box set.
The Visitors Deluxe Edition was released on 23 April 2012. As with previous releases in the Deluxe Edition series, this version of ABBA’s final album offers a DVD of archive material along with CD bonus tracks - including the demo medley ‘From A Twinkling Star To A Passing Angel’, the first previously unreleased ABBA recordings since 1994.false2024-01-06 02:16:50The Visitors5.719811981-11-301981-11-3074Dance-PopElectronicEuropopPopPop RockRockSynth-Pop11125821098735fe0dbc4-6da4-43d4-80e6-09a4e204b31bd87e52c5-bb8d-4da8-b941-9f4928627dc876bb9f69-b5c1-31be-9bbf-b4b3d98988b0/media/data/media5/Music/ABBA/The Visitors (1981)/folder.jpgABBAAlbumArtistABBAArtistABBAABBAABBA are a Swedish pop supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group's name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names arranged as a palindrome. They are one of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time, and are one of the best-selling music acts in the history of popular music.
In 1974, ABBA were Sweden's first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Waterloo", which in 2005 was chosen as the best song in the competition's history as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the contest. During the band's main active years, it consisted of two married couples: Fältskog and Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad and Andersson. With the increase of their popularity, their personal lives suffered, which eventually resulted in the collapse of both marriages. The relationship changes were reflected in the group's music, with later songs featuring darker and more introspective lyrics. After ABBA disbanded in December 1982, Andersson and Ulvaeus continued their success writing music for multiple audiences including stage, musicals and movies, while Fältskog and Lyngstad pursued solo careers. Ten years after the group broke up, a compilation, ABBA Gold, was released, becoming a worldwide best-seller. In 1999, ABBA's music was adapted into Mamma Mia!, a stage musical that toured worldwide and, as of April 2022, is still in the top-ten longest running productions on both Broadway (closed in 2015) and the West End (still running). A film of the same name, released in 2008, became the highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom that year. A sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, was released in 2018.
ABBA are among the best-selling music artists in history, with record sales estimated to be between 150 million to 385 million sold worldwide and the group were ranked 3rd best-selling singles artists in the United Kingdom with a total of 11.3 million singles sold by 3 November 2012. In May 2023, ABBA were awarded the BRIT Billion Award, which celebrates those who have surpassed the milestone of one billion UK streams in their career. ABBA were the first group from a non-English-speaking country to achieve consistent success in the charts of English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Republic of Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. They are the best-selling Swedish band of all time and the best-selling band originating in continental Europe. ABBA had eight consecutive number-one albums in the UK. The group also enjoyed significant success in Latin America and recorded a collection of their hit songs in Spanish. ABBA were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002. The group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, the first recording artists to receive this honour from outside an Anglophonic country. In 2015, their song "Dancing Queen" was inducted into the Recording Academy's Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2024, the United States Library of Congress included the album Arrival (1976) in the National Recording Registry, which recognises works "worthy of preservation for all time based on their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage".
In 2016, the group reunited and started working on a digital avatar concert tour. Newly recorded songs were announced in 2018. Voyage, their first new album in 40 years, was released on 5 November 2021 to positive critical reviews and strong sales in numerous countries. ABBA Voyage, a concert residency featuring ABBA as virtual avatars, opened in May 2022 in London.