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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Abba - The Album
Comment: This was the first album I ever bought and thirty years later I still think it is excelent. It includes two classic Abba number one singles (Take a Chance On Me and Name of The Game), but apart from those every track is pure Abba gold. 'Eagle' sees Abba in full grown up mood and the instrumentation is just fabulous. 'One Man One Woman' gives Frida a chance to shine in full heartbreak mode. 'Move On' was always one of my favourites and has a fabulous melody, if you can ignore the slightly cheesy spoken intro by Bjorn. 'Hole In Your Sole' has tremendous energy and was performed live by Abba in 1977 as part of 'The Girl With Golden Hair' mini musical. 'Thank You For The Music' is perhaps the best known Abba song never to be a major hit. In fact, it wasn't even released as a single in the UK until 1983 and even then it missed the top 30.
'I'm A Marionette' also from the mini musical is perhaps one of Abba's strangest songs with a slightly sinister melody.
Frequently seen as inferior to the mighty 'Arrival', I love this album and have had many happy years listening to it.
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Summary: Thank You for the Music
Comment: Abba by now were producing intelligent, literate pop whilst not compromising on the singalong quality. This album had a distinctive feel about it with more use of synthesisers and even spoken vocals on "Move On."
There's a strong opening with soaring vocals on "Eagle" and the album contains my favourite Abba track "Thank You For the Music" which somehow seems to represent everything the band stood for. Of course the album is far from perfect, again there is some filler and low points but at this point in their career they were trying to vary their output and become more progressive.
This is shown by the fact that three songs on the second side of the original album came from a mini musical entitled "Girl with the Golden Hair" - these include "Thank You for the Music," "I Wonder" and "I am a Marionette."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Superb
Comment: As an Abba fan, ABBA The Album was very welcome and expected in my collection. The one song that I enjoy the most is Move On. The lyrics sound and feel timeless and natural. The second song that makes me scream, shout, be happy and excited is Hole In Your Soul. Yes, "There's gotta be rock'n roll, To fill the hole in your soul".
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Summary: this stand alone album is the groupd finest
Comment: i was walking through the streets of a small dutch town (either venlo or eindhoven) at the height of my obsession with this group, full of their music and images of the girls, next to my parents looking for something for my birthday, blissfully unaware that this was out.
Arrival had blown me away and the emotional response was just beginning to dwindle. so imagine hoe i felt as i walked past a record shop with the whole window deicated to this release; choc full of pos. in an instant i knew thats wanted i wanted (fuuny too, i was 13 on friday 13th jan 1978).
forget the (with hindsight) lame (but at the time awesome) film, this stand alone album is the groups finest. i cherish it to this day and it would still make my top 10.
its still full of brilliant pop hooks and great arrangements, but the plastic fun of earlier stuff is now tinged with an emotional maturity born of mega global sucess and strained personal relationships.
the 2 hit singles ( "Take A Chance On Me" & "The Name of the Game") are as good as any of their other hits, but its the album tracks that really make it a cut above their other work.
We have the theatrical 3 track mini-musical "The Girl with the Golden Hair", the bitter, petulant "I'm A Marionette", the moving yodel-along (no pun intended) Move On, and the hard rocking (seriously) "Hole in your soul".
But its the opening track Eagle which soars (pun intended) above the rest. Apparently a tibute to the californian soft rock of The Eagles, its hard to imagine a more perfectly transcendent record. i time as i weep; its perfect.
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Summary: THE Abba record?
Comment: Following the immense success of Arrival, The Album - their fifth - both consolidated what they were already doing and broke new ground. It's also very much a record of two sides. The first four tracks develop their pop writing ability to slightly more epic proportions - Eagle being a highly evocative near six minutes and the single Name of the Game being a complex, and nuanced, tale of sexual awakening while One Man, One Woman has so much polish you can practically walk into it. The latter stages are altogether more experimental - and darker - Move On is a melodic roller once it gets going, showing massively high production standards, Hole in Your Soul is strangely harsh leading the way for the scenes from their tour's mini-musical The Girl With Golden Hair - the story of a girl who seeks success as a singer but finds herself lost and out of control. Thank You for the Music and I Wonder are lavish forerunners of their Lloyd-Weber collaborations whilst I'm A Marionette is so raw, so furious and so "un"Abba you begin to wonder what's what, the story of what came after - know well known - answers the question.
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