New formats to be released to celebrate 30 years of ABBA “Gold”
ABBA had parted ways for a whole decade when in 1992, there came a revival. It began when British synth-pop duo Erasure recorded four ABBA classics including “Take A Chance On Me” and “Lay All Your Love On Me” as part of their “ABBA-esque” EP. Vince and Andy took their EP to the top of the UK singles chart for five weeks and it was also a massive success around the globe, sparking a new interest in the music of Sweden’s biggest musical export.
ABBA themselves took a chance and in August that year, re-released their 1976 chart topper, “Dancing Queen”, which made the top ten in Switzerland and Norway, No.15 in Sweden itself and No.16 in the UK. It was the precursor to the release of a best of, titled “Gold”, that followed on September 21st, ABBA’s fifth greatest hits collection and their first since the final “The Singles” in 1982. “Gold” would go on to become one of the biggest selling albums of all time and the fourth biggest selling greatest hits album of all time, with sales of 32 million copies and counting…!
In the UK, it has topped the chart on five separate occasions for a total of eight weeks and spent 69 weeks in the top ten selling, to date, a whopping 5.6 million copies – that’s 20 x Platinum! US sales of 6.6 million tell a similar story and around the world multiple Platinum discs have greeted the album in every territory. ABBA remained aloof until 2021 when they made their triumphant comeback with the “Voyage” album, thirty one years after their last musical output as a quartet. Now, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of “Gold”, ABBA are releasing the album on vinyl and cassette, with a double LP version in gold, and gold and black cassette versions of the album.
“Gold” features every possible ABBA classic you can think of from their international breakout song from the Eurovision Song Contest – “Waterloo”, to all time classics like “Money, Money, Money”, “Fernando”, “Knowing Me Knowing You”, “Gimme Gimme Gimme”, “One Of Us” and the sublime “The Winner Takes It All”. We all know the titles and we all know the words, every track is a sing-a-long from “SOS” to “Super Trouper” and from “Dancing Queen” to “Thank You For The Music”, they are all here. Over the years artists have sampled and covered ABBA hits, but these are the real things, the originals and it’s not hard to see why “Gold” became so successful and remains so thirty years later.
“Gold” has been re-issued a number of times since 1992. In 1999 embossed gold autographs of all four members adorned the CD casing while the content underwent ‘digital remastering’. A tenth anniversary edition in 2002 saw revised and updated inlay notes and a redesign of the back cover. In 2008, to coincide with the ‘Mamma Mia’ film, the album was relaunched, and a double CD version followed in 2010, while this increased to a 3CD set in 2014 with the inclusion of the “More ABBA Gold” album that had originally been released in 1993, an album which has sold over three million copies on its own merit.
New “Gold” formats are available from 23rd September or to pre-order here by clicking this link
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