ABBA blog

A crucial part of working on the revised and updated ABBA - The Complete Recording sessions is listening to unreleased alternate mixes, and at the moment I'm concentrating on songs from the Voulez-Vous sessions. In fact, as I'm typing this I've just arrived home from several hours of listening.

When do you know that you really love an ABBA track? When you can listen to around a dozen mixes and mix attempts of it - and some of them over and over again, in order to make accurate notes - without getting tired of the track in question. This happened with 'If It Wasn't For The Nights' today. I also listened to a fair number of 'Angeleyes' mixes, and the other day I made my way through four attempts at 'As Good As New' - another track I really love, so just a pleasure.

During today's listening session I was again struck by how Björn, Benny and Michael worked and worked and worked on those mixes. "Is there a way we can make this track more interesting?", seems to be the question for almost each and every mixing session. "What if we delete that bit? Or shall we put some more echo on that instrument instead? Let's not edit out that section, let's just make something happen while it's going on - mute the drum track for a couple of bars, perhaps." And so it goes on. How could I ever be bored doing this job?

The details of the Voulez-Vous-era recordings and every other ABBA recording will be revealed in ABBA - The Complete Recording Sessions. Pre-order your copy here: abbathecompleterecordingsessions.com.