Recommendations of the Editorial team
An archive text from 2011.
On Thursday Abba announced their reunion: the album “Voyage” will be released on November 5th, and there will be the big CGI show in London next year.
The Abba back catalog by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad is considered to be well examined and largely brought to market. With “Just a Notion” and “Bumblebee” or “Free as a Bumblebee”, two songs that have previously only been released as fragments also make it onto the new album. But there are still songs or song fragments that are waiting to be released.
For example, there is an unreleased version of Benny’s piano instrumental “When The Waves Roll Out To Sea” on YouTube, a piece that is waiting to be expanded. However, there is a fully composed song that, if Abba had released it in 1982, would perhaps not have been up to date, but would have been at the height of their own potential.
Fans know “Just Like That” as a snippet of the “Abba Medley” from the “Thank You For The Music” box set from 1994, parts of the demo were incorporated into “Under Attack”, and it perfectly reflects the fatalistic mood of their last studio album “The Visitors” (1981).
The song would certainly be an instant classic if it were released, but there is something to be said against releasing it on “Voyage”: the duo Gemini re-recorded and released “Just Like That” in 1985.