The Visitors (ABBA album)

Recording and release

Recording began on what was to become ABBA's eighth studio album on 16 March 1981. By this time, tensions in ABBA had heightened. Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog had divorced in July 1980, while the band's other couple, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, announced their divorce in February 1981, adding strain to the musical partnership. Ulvaeus mentioned in retrospect that the sessions were troubled, noting, "It could be frosty sometimes." Lyngstad also commented that they were beginning to tire of working together.

The members of ABBA and their personnel have memories of the recording sessions for this album being rather difficult. To begin with, their sound engineer Michael Tretow had to become accustomed to using the new 32-track digital recorder that had been purchased for Polar Music Studios. He said, "Digital recording...cut out all the hiss, but it also meant that sounds were sharply cut off below a certain level. The sound simply became too clean, so I had to find ways of compensating for that". The first three tracks for the album had already been recorded using analogue tape and therefore Tretow had to transfer all subsequent tracks from digital to analogue and back again to avoid a difference in quality.

On its release, The Visitors reached the top of the charts in a number of territories but was not as successful as the band's previous albums.

On 1 December 2023, The Visitors was reissued as a multi-format release for its delayed 40th anniversary celebration. It included: a double-LP half-speed mastered version of the album, done by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios, pressed on 45rpm 180g black vinyl; a colored vinyl 7" singles box set of "Head Over Heels", "One of Us", "The Day Before You Came", and "Under Attack" (the latter two being from The Singles: The First Ten Years); and individual 7" picture discs of these four singles.

Deluxe edition

The Visitors was reissued on 23 April 2012, as a CD and DVD deluxe edition set. The first disc consisted of a remastered version of the original album, with seven bonus tracks. Featured among them were: a version of "Should I Laugh or Cry" with a brief count-in, from the original United Kingdom and South African 7" release; "I Am the City", recorded in 1982 and released in 1993, on More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits; and, particularly, the 9-minute demo medley "From a Twinkling Star to a Passing Angel". This collection of demos, put together by Benny Andersson, showcased the evolution of "Like an Angel Passing Through My Room", offered insights into ABBA's recording process, and was, at the time, the first release of unheard archive material since 1994's Thank You for the Music box set.

The second disc included the following television material: the performances of "Two for the Price of One" and "Slipping Through My Fingers" from the Dick Cavett Meets ABBA special; the original promo clip of "When All Is Said and Done"; two promotional appearances by the band, from The Late, Late Breakfast Show (BBC) and Nöjesmaskinen (SVT), titled "ABBA In London, November 1982" and "ABBA In Stockholm, November 1982", respectively; four television commercials: two for The Visitors and two for The Singles: The First Ten Years; and the "International Sleeve Gallery". The set also came with a 24-page booklet with an essay on the making of the album.

Pitchfork reviewed this deluxe reissue on 18 May 2012, and gave it an 8.6 rating, saying "even as the band's commercial star faded and its professional relationships quietly unravelled, they were perfectionists. ABBA's music on The Visitors is more pristine and ambitious than it had ever been, its themes darker, its personal politics more tangled". An April 2012 review by The Arts Desk said that "The Visitors is not their best, but it is their most interesting [album], pointing to where Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson would go next".

Album cover

Rune Söderqvist, who had worked with the band on previous designs, was put in charge of the artwork, and came up with an "angel" concept that was based on the album's title and its closing track "Like an Angel Passing Through My Room". The next step was to develop this concept into an idea. As he recalled, "I knew that the painter Julius Kronberg had painted a lot of angels in his time... so I located his studio – at the Skansen park in [Stockholm] – which contained several of his paintings". With photographer Lasse Larsson's help, Söderqvist gathered the band in Kronberg's atelier (in a room with paintings of Eros) and photographed them with a giant painting of an angel as the backdrop.

In the album cover, the group members are positioned apart and appear to be waiting solemnly in the shadows. It was the first time the members were depicted as separate individuals rather than a close-knit group, conveying ABBA's general sense of fatigue.

Julius Kronberg's Atelje (atelier), where the album cover's photo-shoot took place, is located in Skansen Park, Stockholm.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus.

Deluxe edition

Released on 12 April 2012. The tracks "No hay a quien culpar" and "Se me está escapando" (the Spanish versions of "When All Is Said and Done" and "Slipping Through My Fingers", respectively), featured on the Spanish and Latin American versions of the album, were not included on this reissue. Instead, they could be found on The Complete Studio Recordings and the 2014 deluxe edition of Gracias Por La Música.

All tracks are written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus.

Personnel

Adapted from the album's liner notes.

ABBA

• Anni-Frid Lyngstad – lead vocals (1, 3, 5, 9), backing vocals
• Agnetha Fältskog – lead vocals (2, 4, 6, 8), backing vocals
• Björn Ulvaeus – acoustic guitars, lead vocals (7), backing vocals
• Benny Andersson – keyboards, synthesizers, backing vocals

Additional personnel

• Ola Brunkert – drums
• Per Lindvall – drums (1, 4)
• Åke Sundqvist – percussion
• Rutger Gunnarsson – bass guitar
• Lasse Wellander – electric guitar, acoustic guitar
• Jan Kling – flute (5), clarinet (5)
• The Three Boys – mandolins (6) Production
• Benny Andersson; Björn Ulvaeus – producers, arrangers
• Michael B. Tretow – engineer
• Rune Söderqvist – album design
• Lars Larsson – photography (at Julius Kronbergs Atelje, Skansen, Stockholm)

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications and sales

References

References

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