ABBA blog

What are the differences between my books ABBA – The Complete Recording Sessions 1972–1982 and ABBA On Record? If you've read them both, you already know the answer to that question. But I've found that quite a few people out there think that they are more or less identical. That is, of course, not true.

ABBA – The Complete Recording Sessions is very easy to describe: it's a book about how ABBA created their music, song by song, and with detailed essays on the various aspects of making a song come to life, from the writing of the tune to the mixing.

ABBA On Record – Packaged Promoted Reviewed, to give it its full title, is a little harder to sum up in a just a sentence or two. The basic premise for the book is to tell the story of what happened to the music after it had left the recording studio: the story about the single and album sleeves, the various ways the singles and albums were promoted, and what kind of reaction they got in terms of reviews and chart positions. But it's also about ABBA's career development in general, as they went from a 1972 "experiment" to one of the biggest groups on a planet, and then the denouement of their final years.

ABBA On Record also has two appendices: the full story of The Michael B. Tretow Tapes and the recording sessions for the Voyage album. The Voyage sessions are described and detailed in the same format used in ABBA – The Complete Recording Sessions, and this chapter also incorporates the philosophies behind the design of the single and album sleeves: in this I was fortunate to get access to designer Baillie Walsh, who was able to share his memories while they were still fresh in his mind.

The main content of ABBA On Record may sound dry to some, but in my humble opinion, it is not. Sure, there are a number of "dry" facts about typefaces and chart positions, but the bulk of the book is about stories, and the ABBA members themselves are most definitely in it. Again, in my humble opinion, ABBA On Record is one of my best books. It is highly unlikely that this book will ever be reprinted, so get your copy while it's still available.

I hope this post made the differences between the two books a little clearer.