Retro Spins: ABBA - Voyage

 

When word spread across the internet about an upcoming new ABBA album, excitement burst from eager fans wanting to know when they would get their hands on the record, and where they could buy tickets for the tour the group would embark on to support it.

Then the pandemic hit, and everything went silent.

As 2020 slowly turned over to 2021, and people returned to normal lives, ABBA too came back to the forefront to ensure everyone they hadn't forgotten about their first studio album in forty years. It was still very much in the works, and coming soon.

Well today was that day, and so I'm diving head long into Voyage, ABBA's ninth studio album...and I'm probably not going to make any friends with this one.

The album breaks one of my biggest rules. It starts with a ballad, which also happens to be the teased single, I Still Have Faith In You. It's a decent song, but a show opener it is not. It causes the album to limp over the starting line, and this is not helped by the following track, When You Danced With Me, which is so short that it feels incomplete.

Things only get worse from there with the oddly placed Christmas song, Little Things. It derails an already faltering "Voyage", and makes one wonder just what these four masterminds of music were thinking.

While I wish I could say it gets better from there, the rest of the album goes on, seemingly trapped in the era ABBA once thrived in. I suppose it could be perceived as a good thing for familiarity, what it also shows is that the group hasn't developed at all beyond 1981's The Visitors. If anything, they seem to have forgotten how to craft hits in lieu of just writing songs. Forgettable songs at that.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think this album could have met the expectation of the hype. This is The Phantom Menace all over again. Where people will have their own vision, and it's just not going to get met. With that said, I'm also not saying this is a bad album. It's just not one which deemed them coming out of retirement for. The problem becomes that this isn't the 1982 follow up to The Visitors. This is the long awaited, "ABBA is coming back," album. And to that regard, it's just not special enough.

It almost begs the question of whether or not an entire album was the right course of action. Perhaps the impact would have been greater had the group delivered their two singles, and left the rest to fans rabid imaginations of what a full album could have been like.

Overall, I'm just not impressed. This isn't the album ABBA needed to make.

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Retro Spins: Prince - Welcome 2 America

 

I think it's fair to say that while Prince is an iconic rocker from the 80's, and sure, maybe even through the 90's, he has long since become irrelevant in the music industry.  His album sales appear to have been in a steady decline since 1994's Come, and a lot of this seems to be a result of changes in his musical direction.

In the 80's, Prince was throwing a non-stop party through his music, and everyone was invited. Black, white, Mexican, Asian, Indian, it didn't matter. If you wanted to have a good time, you were invited. Then the brakes suddenly slammed, and Prince seemingly said, "Everyone out." Suddenly, he was writing music that had a feeling of exclusivity. Politically, racially, and sometimes nonsensical, his music just didn't seem to resonate with the general audience anymore.

I was among them. I've long since stopped enjoying his music as a whole. Despite this, I continue to maintain a current discography for the artist formally known as a hit maker. I think a lot of this is driven by a longing to hear something that will blow me away. Transport me back to the heyday of Prince. This happens rarely, but it does happen. So because of this, I keep myself invested.

With that said, I don't necessarily get revved up to hear these albums, which is why I'm just now getting around to his July 30, 2021 posthumous album, Welcome 2 America. Even then, I think I'm more so being pushed along because of how much I enjoyed the most recent Duran Duran album, and how I'm looking forward to the forthcoming ABBA album. Basically, I need Prince checked off my "to do" list.

As I expected, or maybe because I expected, the record just didn't resonate with me. A lot of it was simply a downer to listen to. Prince had an agenda in mind, and he wants to push it. This is problematic because it misses the biggest target when it comes to music. That is that it's supposed to be entertaining. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to be preached to by Prince for an hour about how much life sucks, and the world is a mess. I listen to music to escape that reality.

This again goes back to what I touched on above. Prince wants to use his music to stand on a soapbox, and at the end of the day, I just don't want to hear that crap. Welcome 2 America is another continuing misstep for an artist who once knew how to produce hit after hit.

With that said, I know he's with Jesus, and I don't want to make light of the fact that the world lost him far sooner than any of us ever could have expected.

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Retro Spins: Duran Duran - Future Past

 

Duran Duran released their fifteenth studio album, Future Past, today, October 22, 2021. With it, we see the return of veteran rockers, Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor and Roger Taylor, four of the five original members. This album comes quite a bit out from their 2015 entry, Paper Gods, but was it worth the wait?

Short answer? Yes.

Long answer, after forty years of albums, Duran Duran show that they still know what it takes to stay relevant in today's music industry, while continuing to craft hits. Unlike many artists over time who have released albums with numerous throw away tracks, Future Past feels finely honed and meticulously carved out to deliver a heavy punch from start to finish.

The tunes are heavy pop driven, while continuing to provide that groovy funk bass that people have come to expect. Overall, this plays well to their strong points. It's difficult to find a weakness in everything because from start to finish it doesn't let up in the energy. Though personally speaking, the leading track, Invisible, is by far my favorite. It sets the tone and stage for the album as a whole.

It's days like this that make me glad to see bands from the 80's continue to push on through multiple decades. It's awesome to see that they still have material worth recording, and physical albums to release. It helps to make old people like me not feel forgotten amongst a generation of digital children.

Future Past is definitely one worth checking out. I can't imagine Duran Duran fans would be disappointed, and new inductees may find something worth digging into the past for to see where it all started.

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Disclaimer: They Toy Box does not endorse or contribute to piracy. Retro Spins posts are intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. None of the music discussed here is available for sale, downloading or distribution.