The Visitors (ABBA album)
| The Visitors | ||||
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| Studio album by ABBA | ||||
| Released | 30 November 1981 | |||
| Recorded | 16 March – 14 November 1981 Polar Music Studios |
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| Length | 37:39 (Swedish original release) | |||
| Label |
Polar Epic (UK) Atlantic Records (US original release) |
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| Alternative cover | ||||
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2001/2012 re-issue. The cover uses a slightly different picture, has been color-corrected and the group's logo and the album name have been enlarged and centered.
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| Singles from The Visitors | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Blender | |
| Pitchfork Media | (8.6/10) |
The Visitors is the eighth studio album by Swedish pop group ABBA, released on 30 November 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 current 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 recorded and mixed digitally, and was the first in history to be released on the new CD format in 1982 on Atlantic.The Visitors has been reissued in digitally remastered form three times—first in 1997, then in 2001 and again in 2005 as part of The Complete Studio Recordings box set.
The Visitors Deluxe Edition was released on 23 April 2012. As with previous releases in the Deluxe Edition series, this version of ABBA’s final album offers a DVD of archive material along with CD bonus tracks – including the demo medley "From a Twinkling Star to a Passing Angel", the first previously-unreleased ABBA recordings since 1994.
Following the upcoming divorce of Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, recording began on what was to become ABBA's final studio album on 16 March 1981. Only one month had passed since the announcement of their separation when the group entered the studio.
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.
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Wikipedia