ABBA’s Voulez-Vous album is 40 in 2019! Share your thoughts.

It's a really well produced and written disco album. Clearly it was ABBA latching onto the popular sound of the time but they did it exceptionally well. I enjoy listening back to this album a lot. I wish the album cover was more reflective of the music though. It looks a bit like an outtake from Abigail's Party.

 

Kisses Of Fire is such a fantastic song! A real ear worm too.

 

This thread has just made me go and ask my Alexa to play loud and proud the divine If It Wasn't For The Nights! Such an epic piece of pop.

 

B&B did Summer Night City SO wrong. Drop I Have Diahorrea and replace it with SNC and you’ve got the most flawless album ever released.

 

Indeed, that is the one dud that really draggs this otherwise flawless album down.

 

It’s just me that likes I Have A Dream, then?

 

I just find it so treacly and pandering, like Heal the World or Hey You.

 

Aww...yeah.

 

I Have A Dream was huge when it was a single, the closest they ever had to a Christmas No.1. It never seemed bad to me back in the day, and I still like it. I think what marks it out these days is being track 3 on Voulez Vous. But ABBA always have folky songs going back to their Swedish roots on each album, it's just they were usually on side 2...

What I love about Voulez Vous is starting the album with As Good As New - what a statement of intent. That euphoric middle 8 in particular (Agentha sounds so good there) - it's almost like something out of a musical, which made me surprised it didn't end up in Mamma Mia 2.

 

Oh I totally get why they released I Have A Dream as a Christmas single. It's just a shame it's so tepid and lightweight. Especially when you consider their other towering ballads.

 

I Have A Dream is just so dreary, that even Frida sounds bored on it.

 

Voulez-Vous ended up being the most successful ABBA album for UK singles. It had 4 top 5 hits. Even Arrival and The Album didn’t manage that! It’s true that VV produced no #1’s, but I Have A Dream and Chiquita both hit #2 and sold extremely well.

 

An very lengthy campaign too compared to their other albums as well.

 

I played Angeleyes earlier, such a catchy gem!

 

Yeah, it should've been the closing track really. Chiquitita also sticks out a bit, but as it's flawless it doesn't seem to disruptive of the flow.

My first memory of this album was my parents taping it off a friend of theirs for me, but they didn't write down the track names, leaving three under-10s to guess, resulting in an album named: Voolay Voo and featuring such gems as I Had a Dream, The World is Upside Down, Chickateeta, and Kisses Are Fire.

 

I swear once you get the chrous to Kisses Of Fire inside your head, it's impossible to get out.