ABBA-Tar Drawing

I haven't done a new drawing in a while, but I had to do a drawing of the new ABBA-tars. :D 

Voyage

Well, today was the day.  I haven't felt this anxious and excited in such a long time.  ABBA have officially released I Still Have Faith In You and Don't Shut Me Down, and are officially releasing their 9th studio album, Voyage.  Of course this girl pre-ordered their new album, on CD and Vinyl, and the Box Set as well because I didn't know what to get lol, and November 5th can't come sooner!  

I love both of the new songs we've heard so far.  Both ladies sound incredible, Frida sounds amazing in I Still Have Faith In You and Agnetha's vocals in Don't Shut Me Down legit almost sounds like her in the 80s.  I love B&B's background vocals in ISHFIY as well.  There's no doubt that these songs are ABBA songs, and I am so excited to hear the rest of the songs on November 5th.

 

To add to the excitement, here's the tracklisting (credit to ABBAccess on Instagram), and it seems quite likely that ABBA are releasing Just A Notion from the Undeleted Medley.  That's actually my favorite song from Undeleted, aside from Given A Little Bit More, and I am sooo happy about it. 

I'm quite optimistic about the ABBA-tar show as well.  Though they don't look 100% real, they look really good and I'm really impressed!  (I don't know why the dudes have such interesting slicked back hair in this photo, but it's ok I guess.)

My main concern is actually the outfits that Hologram ABBA will be wearing.  In my honest opinion, they don't look quite like clothes that ABBA would wear and more like outfits that tribute bands would wear as ABBA-inspired costumes.

 

 

But I am going to try my best not to complain about that.  Anyways, I'm gonna go listen to ABBA's new songs again, and I am so so excited for the next couple of months.  Maybe someday I'll even make it to London and see ABBA's show for myself!  it sounds really, really excited! :D  Also, you guys should definitely watch the I Still Have Faith In You music video - there are so many lovely unreleased footage of ABBA!

Also here are some more snapshots from the various videos released today! :)  Nothing makes me happier than seeing my four favorite people together again. <3

Record Collection Update - Post ABBA Edition

In December, 2020, I finished my ABBA record collection, and I didn't plan on buying anymore records, but then about a month ago I randomly decided to just window shop on Discogs and ultimately ended up buying a ton of things. As an ABBA fan, I've always wanted to have not just have a complete ABBA collection, but have a complete collection of the ABBA member's solo works.  

Usually my buying experiences have been pretty easy, but this time was a little bit confusing.  (No complaints against any sellers though!)  Thankfully everything in the end worked out, and all my records arrived safely and soundly.  :)  One of them I even bought from Sweden, and it took the longest to arrive, but that was to be expected.  

Anyways, I am really excited to finally have all of the ladies of ABBA's post-ABBA solo work in my collection.

To start, here is my Frida collection.

Here is Frida's first post-ABBA record, Something's Going On from 1982.  I know a lot of people don't like having stickers stuck on the front of their records, and while I don't quite like having a sticker blocking the lovely cover, I don't mind it all that much.  This record also has one of those "For Promotional Use" things printed on the front, and I only have one other record that has that.  I was told that those tend to mean that your record is rare, so I'm pretty happy. 

Next up we have Frida's 1984 album, Shine.  While the rest of my records are original releases, this is actually the 2017 rerelease of the album.  Since my dad and I upgraded our record player, almost all my records play incredibly, but this one was especially clear.  I also bough this one new, so that's pretty cool.

This is Frida's 1996 album, Djupa Antedag.  As far as I know, this wasn't released on vinyl, or at least not originally, which is why I have it as a CD.  I find it to be quite fascinating how the CD has all this installation information for Windows 95 I think it was.  I really like this album, even though it's entirely in Swedish and can't understand it perfectly.  But that's never stopped me.  I always listen to music in Swedish. :)

And here is my Agnetha post-ABBA collection.  Until now, I only had Agnetha's 2013 album, and now I have the rest of her solo albums.

Agnetha's first post-ABBA solo album, Wrap Your Arms Around Me, from 1983.  This one also has a lot of stickers on the front, but they're not obscuring anything. :)

Next is Eye's of a Woman from 1985.  For some reason no one was really selling this album in the US on Discogs, so I had to order it from Sweden.  

Then we have 1987's I Stand Alone.  I really like this album actually, and of Agnetha's solo albums, I think this one might be my favorite. :)

And last but certainly not least, we have Agnetha's 2004 comeback album, My Coloring Book.  I think this album was also released on record, but I chose to get it as a CD.  

So that's all I have for now.  I definitely hope to get the ABBA member's pre-ABBA solo work someday, but they aren't easily available in the US, but someday!  Until then, I really enjoyed completing my Agnetha and Frida post-ABBA solo collection, and I will definitely continue to enjoy listening to all of them. :)

ABBA Voyage - An ABBA Fan's thoughts

 The past week has been absolutely crazy for ABBA fans, starting with a supposed ABBA press conference that may or may not have happened in Stockholm earlier in the week (or was it last week? Can't remember anymore lol.)  Even though fans were reassured that it was nothing to concern about, somehow we knew that we would be getting some sort of announcement soon. For the past couple of days I've even been having dreams about ABBA's songs, alternating between the songs turning out  incredible or the songs being awful.  I had one of those dreams today, and though I don't recall whether I liked the songs or not in the dream, shortly after I woke up, I went to check Instagram and was surprised to see the ABBA Voyage announcement, or more like tease because there isn't much information about it as of yet.

So far from what I can tell, next Thursday, it seems they're having global ABBA fan events, like in London, New York, Vienna, and there's going to be a worldwide live stream of an ABBA documentary of sorts so that fans from everywhere can see it.  The question is, what is the Voyage?  Is it the official name of the ABBA-tar project?  The name of the documentary?  Or the name of an album....?  Either way, I am excited about it no matter what.  

I know a lot of people haven't been overly impressed with the idea of the "hologram" tour, but for fans like me who have never had the opportunity to have seen ABBA live because we were born too late, this will hopefully give us the opportunity to experience it.  Now from the little tidbits I've heard about the ABBAtar project, it seems very similar to my ABBA concert recreation series (which is no wonder why they booted me off YouTube), and that's absolutely incredible.  Now of course I have questions as to how accurate the "holograms" will be, will they do dumb synchronized dances that ABBA never did live on stage, will they look exactly like the way they did in 1979 or will they be like the holograms at the museum that have 1977 hair and 1979 outfits, etc etc, but I won't know until I go, right?  

I was a lot more keen on the idea of this being an actual tour, traveling the world with tour dates, but it seems the ABBAtars are gonna permanently live in London, which is a little bit of a bummer for me as I am not from the UK, and traveling is not easy for me.  I've only been on a plane I think a total of  4 times in my life, 2 round trips, and those were over a decade ago.  I don't go anywhere much, even before the whole COVID-19 pandemic, so I don't know how I would get to London to see the show for myself.  But I can hope that someday I'll make it there!

In regards to the new songs, as of right now, we don't have an explicit date as to when we will be hearing at least one of the songs, but I can only hope that we will get to hear something during the September 2nd festivities. 

Overall, it's an absolutely exciting time and I cannot wait for next Thursday!

ABBA Voyage

 The wait is almost over! :O