The Visitors is the eighth studio album by Swedish pop group ABBA. It was released on November 30, 1981.
With The Visitors, ABBA took several steps away from the “lighter” pop music they had recorded previously and the album is often regarded as a more complex and mature effort. The opening track, “The Visitors”, with its ominous synthesizer sounds and the distinctive lead vocal by Frida, announced a change in musical style. With Benny and Frida going their separate ways, the pain of splitting up was explored yet again in “When All Is Said and Done”. The major hit single on the album, “One of Us”, also depicted the end of a love story. Elsewhere there were Cold War themes—highly topical at the time—and further songs of isolation and regret.
The Visitors was one of the first records ever to be digitally recorded and mixed, as well as one of the earliest in history to be pressed on the CD format in 1982[ (in terms of commercial release dates, it was predated by the Japanese release of Billy Joel’s 52nd Street.) The Visitors has been reissued in digitally remastered form four times—first in 1997, then in 2001, again in 2005 as part of The Complete Studio Recordings box set and most recently in 2012.
For four decades, The Visitors stood as ABBA’s last studio album, until the release of their 2021 album, Voyage.
- “The Visitors” 5:49
- “Head over Heels” 3:45
- “When All Is Said and Done” 3:20
- “Soldiers” 4:38
- “I Let the Music Speak” 5:20
- “One of Us” 3:55
- “Two for the Price of One” 3:36
- “Slipping Through My Fingers” 3:51
- “Like an Angel Passing Through My Room” 3:25
- “Should I Laugh or Cry”
- “The Day Before You Came”
- “Under Attack”
- “You Owe Me One”
Agnetha Fältskog – vocals
Anni-Frid Lyngstad – vocals
Björn Ulvaeus – acoustic guitar, guitar, mandolin, vocals
Benny Andersson – synthesizers, keyboards, vocals
Ola Brunkert – drums
Rutger Gunnarsson – bass, mandolin
Janne Kling – flute and clarinet
Per Lindvall – drums (on “Soldiers” and “The Visitors”)
Åke Sundqvist – percussion
Lasse Wellander – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin
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