Music / The Visitors

I have been waiting for these visitors...

The Visitors is ABBA's eighth and penultimate studio album, released on November 30, 1981. It's notable for being the first popular music album to be pressed onto a Compact Disc with the intention of a commercial release on the format.^note It wasn't the first CD outright though (that being a test pressing of a recording of Richard Strauss' An Alpine Symphony) nor was it the first CD of any kind manufactured for commercial release (that being a recording of Fryderyk Chopin's piano waltzes). It wasn't the first CD released either, that being a batch of fifty albums from CBS-owned artists, with 52nd Street by Billy Joel frequently being considered the first CD to be released due to it being the earliest-indexed title in this batch.

The year previous, the two couples (Benny and Frida, Bjorn and Agnetha) had divorced, putting strain on their musical partnership. Tired of working together, recording sessions were cold and distant. Frustration over having to use a 32-track digital recording rather than their old one led to a delay, only making things worse. The tensions show themselves in the music. Indeed, it is their darkest and most serious work, filled with songs of failed relationships and paranoia, along with a heavy electronic influence. Gloom hangs over the album, reflected by the cover, where all four members are positioned at opposite sides of a dark room, all studiously ignoring each other.

Upon its release, it reached the top spot in quite a few European album charts, but its singles did not fare nearly as well, only topping the charts in four countries ("One of Us" hit #1 in Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands; "Head Over Heels" also topped the latter), shocking at the time compared to their previous releases. The band dissolved in 1983, and wouldn't reunite until 2016; until the release of Voyage in 2021, The Visitors spent decades holding the distinction of being ABBA's final album.

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Tracklist

Side One

1. "The Visitors" (5:47)
2. "Head Over Heels" (3:49)
3. "When All Is Said And Done" (3:19)
4. "Soldiers" (4:41)

Side Two

1. "I Let The Music Speak" (5:21)
2. "One Of Us" (3:57)
3. "Two For The Price Of One" (3:38)
4. "Slipping Through My Fingers" (3:54)
5. "Like An Angel Passing Through My Room" (3:40)

2001 CD re-release bonus tracks

1. "Should I Laugh Or Cry"
2. "The Day Before You Came"
3. "Cassandra"
4. "Under Attack"

2012 Deluxe Edition Bonus Tracks

1. "Should I Laugh or Cry"
2. "I Am the City"
3. "You Owe Me One"
4. "Cassandra"
5. "Under Attack"
6. "The Day Before You Came"
7. "From a Twinkling Star to a Passing Angel"

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Tropes Included

• A God Am I: "I Am The City".
  I'm the street you walk, the language you talk
  I am the city…
• Alpha Bitch / Lovable Alpha Bitch: The protagonist of "Head Over Heels" may be one or the other, but the song's narrator seems unsure which.
• Ambiguous Ending: "The Day Before You Came" says nothing about what happens when the "You" arrives. The gloomy music and dispassionate delivery may suggest that whoever or whatever the "you" is, its arrival didn't make the narrator's life any better in the long-term. Word of God says "you" is a boyfriend who abandoned the narrator, leaving her to return to the old life she now realises was empty of meaning.
• Anti-Love Song: The voice in "Should I Laugh Or Cry" is frustrated with how pathetic she finds her husband.
• Break-Up Song: "When All is Said and Done" is a bittersweet one. The narrator is glad the relationship is over, but she's not unhappy she had it.
• Cassandra Truth: "Cassandra" is the Cassandra myth from the perspective of someone who sympathizes with her.
• Creator Cameo: In the "Head Over Heels" video, Frida bumps into director Lasse Hallstrom (the guy in the puffy blue coat).
• Day in the Life: "The Day Before You Came". The entire song is a listing of events in a typical day of the narrator.
• Dead All Along: Some think the protagonist of "The Day Before You Came" is this.
• Doomed by Canon:
  Pity Cassandra, that no one believed you
  But then again you were lost from the start…
• Flashback Fail: The narrator of "The Day Before You Came" went through the day in question on autopilot, to the extent that she doesn't actually have any clear memory of it. She just knows that she didn't deviate from her normal routine to any great degree and so prefaces almost every "memory" with "I must have..." or words to that effect.

• Grief Song: "Slipping Through My Fingers".
  The feeling that I'm losing her forever
  And without really entering her world…
• Henpecked Boyfriend: Oddly enough, Björn played this to Frida in the "Head Over Heels" video. He reluctantly follows Frida around on her shopping trip and is forced to carry her bags.
• Lemony Narrator: Agnetha in "Head Over Heels".
  I have a very good friend
  The kind of girl who likes to follow a trend
  She has a personal style
  Some people love it others tend to go wild

  Her man is one I admire
  He's so courageous but he's constantly tired
  Each time that he speaks his mind
  She pats his head and says,
  "That's all very fine
  Exert that will of your own
  When we're alone
  Now we better hurry."
• Lyrical Dissonance: Granted, this is ABBA's signature trope.
  • "I Let The Music Speak" is about the voice's love of and connection with music, but it sounds bored.
  • Averted with "One Of Us". The tone is as sad as the lyrics.
  • "Two For The Price Of One" cheerfully narrates the life of a depressed man whose life has no meaning. It ends in a wedding march after he meets the younger one of the prostitutes, but it's uncertain which one he married or if it was both.
  • "Slipping Through My Fingers" again averts this by both being and sounding sad.
  • "Should I Laugh Or Cry" relates the voice's despair and frustration over her pathetic and verbally abusive husband in a upbeat tone.
  • "The Day Before You Came" and its video sound and look very sinister, but the lyrics themselves (supposedly) describe a woman's mundane life before she met her lover, and implies that she now leads a more interesting life. That said, the song offers no description of what happens AFTER she meets him. Word of God says the lover broke up with her, forcing her to return to her old life.
  • "Under Attack", a song about how scary it is to be paranoid or kidnapped or both, is again surprisingly upbeat. Surprising if you are new to ABBA, at least.
  • "You Owe Me One" has incredibly silly, upbeat music, and yet features some of the darkest lyrics ever in the band's music, indicating being hopelessly doomed in a relationship.
    Now there's a shadow falling over our faces
    doubt forever in our hearts
    And in a while we'll start to pick up the traces
    we won't find the missing parts
    • And in the second verse
    Something unwanted has entered our existence
    I think it's better to do it from a distance
• Mail-Order Bride: In "Two For the Price of One", where the man finds their ad among the relationship ads.
• Mood Dissonance: The expression "an angel passes through the room" refers to an awkward silence. However, though the lyrics of "Like An Angel Passes Through My Room" are about reminiscing alone by the fireplace, the music makes it sound like it refers to an actual religious experience.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • "Two for the Price of One", a humorous "Shaggy Dog" Story about mail-order brides, sits right in between "One of Us", a Break-Up Song, and "Slipping Through My Fingers", a song about the narrator missing out her daughter's childhood.
  • "Head Over Heels", the other humorous song in the album, is in between "The Visitors", a song about a political dissident fearing that they're about to be arrested by the Secret Police, and "When All Is Said and Done", another Break-Up Song.
• One-Woman Wail: Performed by Frida at the end of "The Day Before You Came".
• The Power of Friendship: "When All Is Said And Done".
• Production Foreshadowing: If you hadn't already figured out that Benny and Bjorn had ambitions toward musical theatre, "I Let the Music Speak" makes it clear, as it sounds like it could have been lifted directly from a Broadway cast album. The more subtle but better known "The Day Before You Came" is also frequently noted as a precursor to the pair's work on Chess.
• Riding into the Sunset: A variation with the final shot of the group in their very last video "Under Attack" has them walking away from camera in a dark warehouse outside into the bright daylight.
• Sanity Slippage Song:
  • "The Visitors": The narrator is paranoid people are coming after her, but maybe she's just insane. She even Lampshades this fact:
    Now I hear them moving
    Muffled noises coming through the door
    I feel I'm crackin' up
  • "You Owe Me One" has the narrator losing their mind frantically due to depression over a failing relationship, a fact captured by its upbeat as opposed to sad music for the lyrics. They hint that they'll have a breakdown if they don't go on holiday to the Bahamas to "get a break from their petty little dramas".
  • "Under Attack" may also be a anxiety-induced hallucination.
• Secret Police: Who are probably ringing the doorbell in "The Visitors", since none of her friends would be so stupidly impatient and she is apparently in hiding.
• Series Fauxnale: For decades, The Visitors stood as ABBA's last album thanks to the band's dissolution in 1983; their reunion in 2016, and the creation of 2021's Voyage, ultimately did away with that.
• Shout-Out:
  • In "The Day Before You Came", the narrator says, "There's not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn't see." In the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again soundtrack, this is changed to House of Cards.
  • Then she reads some book that, at her best guess, was written by Marilyn French. In the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again soundtrack, this is changed to Margaret Atwood.
• Stalker with a Crush: "Under Attack" is about being stalked and being in a constant state of fear because of it.
• This Is No Time to Panic: The song "The Visitors" is about a dissident having a panic attack when she believes the Secret Police are ringing her doorbell.
• Three-Way Sex / Twin Threesome Fantasy: "Two For The Price Of One". Done as a "Shaggy Dog" Story ending with the revelation that they're not twins, they're mother and daughter.
• Unreliable Narrator:
  • The female protagonist of "The Day Before You Came" starts practically every description of her day with the phrase "I must have..." (For example, "I must have read the evening paper then" or "I must have lit my seventh cigarette at half past two"), indicating she thinks she did the event, but she's not quite sure.
  • It's entirely possible that no one is coming after the narrator of "The Visitors" and she's just insane.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: "The Day Before You Came" deals in part with songwriter Björn Ulvaeus's divorce from the singer, Agneta Fältskog.
• War Is Hell: For civilians, and not just soldiers, in "Soldiers".
• Wham Line: "Two For The Price Of One":

  She said, "I'm sure we must be perfect for each other
  And if you doubt it you'll be certain when you meet my mother"