ABBA’s ‘The Visitors’ And Period Singles To Be Released In Deluxe Suite
They include a 2LP, 45rpm edition of the album itself, remastered at Abbey Road Studios.
Special vinyl editions of ABBA’s 1981 album The Visitors and singles from the era are to be released in a suite of deluxe products on December 1.
Shop the best of ABBA’s discography on vinyl and more.
Available for pre-order from today (18), they comprise a 2LP, 45rpm edition of the album itself, remastered at Abbey Road Studios. The discs will be presented in a gatefold sleeve featuring obi strip and certificate of authenticity. Also available to order now is a 4×7″ colour singles box set as a D2C exclusive, and individual 7″ picture discs of the ABBA singles “Head Over Heels,” “One Of Us,” “The Day Before You Came,” and “Under Attack.” The first two of these titles were tracks from the album, while the second pair both came from the late 1982 compilation The Singles: The First Ten Years.
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The Visitors was, for many years, the “final” studio album by the Swedish superstars, until their unforgettable reunion that led to the release of Voyage in 2021. Work on the 1981 album, the group’s eighth, commenced on March 16 that year, when Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and their team of four trusted collaborators – Lasse Wellander on guitar, Rutger Gunnarsson on bass, Ola Brunkert on drums, and Åke Sundqvist on percussion – went into Polar Music Studios in Stockholm with engineer Michael B. Tretow.
The much-admired album was the sound of a group coming to terms with their marital splits and the prospect of what life would be after the end of their incredible time together. The first single, and ABBA’s last major worldwide hit, was “One Of Us,” with lead vocals by Agnetha Fältskog, featuring a narrative about a woman wishing she could patch up a dead relationship. The closing “Like An Angel Passing Through My Room” featured only Anni-Frid Lyngstad’s solitary vocal musings and a bare synthesizer arrangement.
The album sold an estimated five million copies worldwide, going platinum in Sweden, the U.K., Germany, and Finland, and gold in Australia, Spain, and elsewhere. Pitchfork’s review of a 2012 reissue of The Visitors noted that ABBA’s music on the LP was “more pristine and ambitious than it had ever been, its themes darker, its personal politics more tangled.”
Pre-order ABBA’s The Visitors deluxe product suite.
