Well, I can dance with you, honey, if you think it's funny

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

02/09/79 : Voulez Vous - ABBA

Our fifth visit with ABBA, although two of them have been best-ofs and there was also the Voyage cash-in, so there's an argument this is only our second proper album from them -  this must have been around their peak, mustn't it?

The problem with ABBA albums is that you're so familiar with the singles that it's hard to judge the other tracks - are they not so well known because they're not as good or do they feel not as good because they're not so well known? Having said that, I've never really liked "Chiquitita" but "Voulez Vous", "I Have A Dream" and (particularly) "Does Your Mother Know?" ("I can't take a chance on a chick like you") are all great. Of the non-single tracks, "Angel Eyes", "If It Wasn't For The Nights" and "Kisses Of Fire" stood out as decent enough, but "The King Has Lost His Crown" is a bit weird. Overall, I'd say it's a pretty decent album if you're in the mood for some ABBA though - but if you don't like them, then you're probably better off avoiding it!

We're at #5 in the charts this week on their seventeenth week of an impressive 43 week run, with it having peaked at #1 for its first four weeks. The rest of the top five were Led Zeppelin (a new entry), Bob Dylan (another new entry). Electric Light Orchestra and The Best Disco Album In The World and the next highest new entry was Van Morrison (#29).

Wikipedia has more than I was expecting on the album (156 milliPeppers) and it tells us this is their sixth album and apparently they're "embracing disco music" - I'm pretty certain they'd been doing that for some time before this, but what do I know? The recording process was quite tortuous, only being freed up when Bjorn and Agnetha sorted out their divorce and everything flowed after that. Critically, it was pretty well received, but I think that well-known bastion of wisdom, Smash Hits got it about right when it said ABBA "don't disappoint but they don't exactly inspire either". Commercially, it obviously did well in Europe and did surprisingly well in the US (#19) considering the general feeling they never really cracked it over there.

discogs.com tells us you only need to drop a couple of quid to pick one of these up, but if you're happy to go up to £150 then you get the deluxe pack which includes versions on vinyl, CD, DVD and, most bizarrely, a double-LP half-speed master - good luck in finding a way to play that. I didn't mind this, but I feel you've got to be a die-hard ABBA fan to listen to any of their albums other than Gold and there's certainly nothing here to tempt me away from that. 

26/08/79 - A pretty fine compilation album
09/09/79 - Him again!

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