Abba Gold: Greatest Hits

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That fondness exists because of the real power greatest hits albums once had: They threw open doors for curious new listeners, solidified artists’ place in the canon, and transformed reputations that had fallen into disrepair.

The 1993 audio releases include a single edit of "Eagle", a promo edit of "The Visitors" and an alternate mix of "Lovelight".It capitalized on a simmering, subcultural interest in ABBA’s work and sparked a full-blown revival, one that culminated in Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan belting and grunting their way through “S. The footage is directed by film-maker Baillie Walsh, and produced by Johan Renck – best known as the Emmy-winning director of TV miniseries Chernobyl – and Svana Gisla, who worked with Renck on videos for David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar. This new edition will actually be a three-CD set, presented in a digi-pack, and will feature the standard 19-track compilation on disc one, the More ABBA Gold set on disc two, and a third CD made up of B-sides (see full track listing below).

By focusing on the hits, they crystallize the essence of each star,” wrote Erlewine, touching on compilations of work by Elton John, Billy Joel, and Tom Petty. Its beautiful and full of surface feelings, but if you dig underneath their image, you'll find a certain amount of despair.And if the commercial potential of ABBA’s music wasn’t already evident, it became impossible to ignore in mid-1992 when Erasure’s cover EP Abba-esque topped the charts across the UK and continental Europe. Polygram’s decision to detach the album’s sequencing from the arc of ABBA’s career makes it harder to appreciate the band’s gradual transformation. Take it from no less an authority than Max Martin: “I’m a sucker for the melancholy,” admitted the legendary pop producer in a 2001 interview with TIME Europe. ABBA reminds me of some outside artists who make up their own world and there is our world and then there's ABBA's world. But the level of quality represented on Gold sprung from more than just studio scheming or bald ambition.

BuzzFeed music editor Matthew Perpetua included Gold: Greatest Hits among the compilations he considered "so well curated in presenting a fertile period of a career that they are arguably an artist's definitive work". As these licences were renewed every three years, between 1989 (when PolyGram acquired Polar) and 1992 all of these licences had expired. For gay men around the world, ABBA’s blend of naïve camp—consider the outfits they wore on stage, which ran the gamut from High Elven couture to sets of matching white silk kimonos—indelible melodies, and genuinely wrenching melodrama proved captivating. When Anderson’s Polar Music Group (and, consequently, ABBA’s songs and masters) were acquired by Polygram (now part of Universal Music Group) in 1989, the label had to wait for Polar’s patchwork of licensing deals to expire before devising a coherent strategy with which to approach ABBA’s library of hits. or “Dancing Queen” or “Super Trouper” for the first time can feel like hearing “ Good Vibrations” or “ Born to Run” in the same fashion: Your pleasure centers are overwhelmed until they blow up like the Grinch’s tiny heart, expanding beyond their old size and becoming something new.

Their romantic strife was explored with great candour in songs such as The Winner Takes It All, and in the psychodramas of their final album in 1981. And while all four members continued working together with an impressive level of professionalism, the fact remained that Ulvaeus and Andersson were writing music and lyrics, including post-breakup ballads and wounded domestic dramas, for their ex-wives to sing. Take a Chance on Me” is best remembered for its a cappella opening buoyant chorus, but its verses are pure Swedish honky-tonk; I hear them and think of Daft Punk’s “ Fragments of Time,” a hidden jam on Random Access Memories that’s built on a warm country boogie.