You can try listening to ABBA’s first album in almost 40 years. I wouldn’t recommend it. “Voyage” is everything ABBA was not: pedantic, childish, amateurish, devoid of the hooks or choruses that made ABBA such an appealing Top 40 enterprise.
The three singles already released were like that, too, so I don’t know why I thought the rest of the songs on “Voyage” would be any different. It’s as if Benny and Bjorn, who wrote songs like “Dancing Queen” and “SOS” and “Take a Chance on Me” completely forgot how to write catchy hits.
Instead, the album is like gloppy sugar, more Muzak-y than ever before. The ballads are drags, the few uptempo songs don’t have enough melodic construction to carry them. You lost interest as the album unfolds.
Of course, aside from Greatest Hits, ABBA was never an album group. They were all about singles. Benny and Bjorn have forgotten that, too. And there’s some weird one called “Keep an Eye on Dan.” Is Dan a kid? A dog? What the heck is going on? And why do I care?
Stick to the hits, fans. Stay away from this.
