The Visitors Poll

This album is shock full of contenders, really. "I Let The Music Speak", "Two For The Price Of One", "Slipping Through My Fingers", "Like An Angel Passing Through My Room". Plus the CD edition has 4 really great bonus tracks too. But it's "Head Over Heels", really, it is.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/ABBA_-_The_Visitors_%28Polar%29.jpg

Yeah "Head Over Heels" but nothing here makes me do jumping jacks. The curse of maturity. Probably a good thing they stopped here.

never post again

cosign

uh-huh...

I like the bonus tracks a lot - paritcularly Under Attack, for the crazy evocative way-too-short synth solo. I thought the Day Before You Came was on this as a proper track. Oh well...

I'm gonna go for "One Of Us". Just broken up with someone, could do with a bit of Visitors right now. :-(

I find it weird to imagine this album w/o bonus tracks, esp "Day Before You Came" which for me is kind of teh centre point of the album.

If they kept at it, they would've been indistinguishable from Dollar (though not Bucks Fizz) within two or three years.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

If they kept at it, they would've been indistinguishable from Dollar (though not Bucks Fizz) within two or three years.

Within 2-3 years from "The Visitors", Dollar were more or less gone. (Yes, I know they did a comeback with a cover of "Oh L'Amour", but that was the exception)

I was dreading this one. It's quite impossible, obviously. I would like to vote for "Soldiers", which is a lovely tune, in many ways a successful version of an idea that didn't properly work for me on "Fernando" and "Chiquitita" finally given the chorus it deserves, and not likely to pick up any marks here. But my favourite is still "When All Is Said and Done", because it speaks about middle age better than any other tune they ever did. And it's a helluva tune.

It feels like this album drifts in and out of favour all the time, but it is their best album. There are absolutely no duff tracks whatsoever.

Abba loved their phrasal idioms and ciches, huh

...either the opener or the original album closer, for me. can't friggin' decide, huh.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Within 2-3 years from "The Visitors", Dollar were more or less gone.

Right. But that doesn't detract from my argument.

Your argument being bollocks kind of does, tho.

I still can't believe "The Day Before You Came" isn't on this. "Under Attack" is also such an important element of the album to me, I can't really think of it any other way. Can we repoll with bonus tracks please??

would vote

I would say bonus tracks don't belong in a poll, because they weren't really supposed to be on the album.

That being said, those two tracks (and the b-sides, which were also great) help make the album better. The three last editions of the album have all had different bonus tracks though.

zero soldiers is rrrong...but one of us as top 2 is prob otm (bassline!)

also feeling the absence of "Under Attack" here. one of my favourite Abba songs.

man i challoply sometimes think this is top 10 album evah tbqh

that's not a challop. the results on this poll are a huge fucking challop tho.

http://open.spotify.com/track/0mp4YjQgmzO6OLIKPkuX2R

that 'unheard demos' medley now available on Spotify. kinda measly at 9 minutes but hey.

I'm just going to come out and say it: I think 'When All Is Said and Done' is a better song than 'The Winner Takes It All'

I probably agree with this. Maybe better than The Day Before You Came as well

I wish that 'The Day Before You Came' could have been on this album, but I don't know where it would have gone as the sequencing on this is so dead-on.

Hell no to "When All Is Said and Done" being better than either of those songs. Then again, I have a thing against vanilla major-chord progressions no matter how good the lyrics they're attached to, though, so maybe I'm not to be trusted.

Soldiers is underrated as shit and we should run this poll again.

"soldiers" is a perfect song. i would've voted for it

I agree that 'Soldiers' rules, mainly because of the rhythm section on it.

Holy shit, I just agreed with Brad!

Two for the Price of One could've been an Abba classic with the girls singing and a different lyric. Could possibly say the same about Head Over Heels - the lyrics are a bit weak. These kind of character sketch soap opera songs feel like a throwback to their earliest albums rather than the personal first-person stuff that made their name.

Soldiers and the title track are the two best here. The arrangement of the voices on the chorus of Soldiers is amazing.

There's nothing wrong with the lyrics on those tracks, IMO! I would have loved to see what everyone's reaction was when Bjorn & Benny brought 'Two For The Price Of One' into the sessions.

They probably asked where the real words were.

Head Over Heels is amazing. I like Super Trouper more, nut the first two songs on this album are about as strong as songs get.

lol the "head over heels" lyrics are awesome

This, Super Trouper and ABBA are my favourite three LP's of theirs.

Whenever I listen to this or Super Trouper, I always find myself thinking to myself that for all the 24 carat hits they wrote and released prior to those records, that they split up just as they were getting warmed up. These albums don't sound like the output of a creatively dead band. I'm guessing then-contemporary critics and record buyers disagreed, though.

Records buyers maybe, critics were irrelevant.

I love the arrangement on 'Like An Angel Passing Through My Room'... it's so spare and haunting that I can't believe it's the same band that did stuff like 'Bang-A-Boomerang'