The Visitors
| ABBA
The Visitors
The Visitors is the eighth studio album by Swedish pop group ABBA, released on 30 November 1981. With The Visitors, ABBA took several steps away from the "lighter" pop music they had recorded previously and the album is often regarded as a more complex and mature effort. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
Show All-
The Visitors
A fifth reissue of a 30-year old album needs something remarkable to make fans bite, and EMI promised just that for this edition of ABBA's risk-taking final record, which hosts their first piece of unreleased material since 1994, along with a set of uniformly terrific bonus tracks.
-
All Music
The Visitors is a beautifully made, very sophisticated album, filled with serious but never downbeat songs, all beautifully sung and showing off some of the bold songwriting efforts.
-
Sputnik Music
ABBA's final studio album which proved to be a under appreciated gem of pop music.
-
Renowned for Sound
The Visitors is generally forgotten amongst casual ABBA fans as it is depressing and doesn’t have an obvious classic hit single. However, it is THE go-to ABBA studio album as it is an early 1980s pop masterpiece.
-
Culture Fusion Reviews
The album is denied the absolute highest ratings because of “Two for the Price of One” and for the fact that it’s simply not indicative of what ABBA did best. That’s “Arrival” or “The Album.” But this brave album definitely shows the band was more than just “stupid pop pap.”
-
The Telegraph
Lathered with minor keys and wistful sorrow . . . [The Visitors] showcases a refreshingly different side of ABBA.
-
A Diverse Sound
I feel The Visitors is a forgotten classic. Even without the stand-alone singles that made them a household name, this album is one of, if not their absolute best.
-
Abba Reviews
Visitors is a truly enigmatic album. Written in a period of crisis which they couldn't get over, it shows signs of despair and boredom, on one hand, and some really genial masterstrokes, on the other.
-
Pop Rescue
This album may take more listens to get in to, and therefore it may improve on the rating i’ve given it. Whilst I don’t deny ABBA’s ability of making great pop music, they are also guilty of nauseatingly twee songs.
-
The Slow Review
When the glorious 70s slipped into the cool 80s, Abba put out their last album. Welcome to some serious art built on divorce, sadness and savvy.
-
Don Ignacio
I can understand why many fans won't like this album, because they'll feel betrayed that ABBA changed to a much dark incarnation from their former happy, pop-ster selves. Personally, I think it's best when artists choose to evolve and change their faces every once in awhile.
-
Elsewhere
The storytelling and musical-like lyrics hardly match Fleetwood Mac's Rumours for soul-bearing – Bjorn and Benny mostly kept an emotional distance from their lives – but musically The Visitors was ambitious, layered and as synth-edelic as it was dramatically moody or glitzed-up pop.
-
Verbal Diarrhoea
A bit of a mixed bag for me, particularly off the back of the poptastic previous album. It has such an intriguing feel to it though, I almost feel that it’s a bit wasted on me though. It’s easy to throw around words like ‘mature’ and ‘complex’, and I guess they are all appropriate, but I think that does a bit of disservice to their earlier work.
-
Adrian's Album Reviews
Much was the way it actually happened, the happiness present in ABBA music is entirely absent from the LP, the emotional resonance is still there but without levity, across an albums length, becomes rather trying.
-
ABBA: The Albums
This album,though successful, was the start of ABBA's quick commercial decline that marred the end of their career.
-
Record Collector Mag
The album’s strengths, though, are its saddest songs, with the heartbreaking ballad When All Is Said And Done and the regretful Slipping Through My Fingers articulating the four-piece’s personal woes.
-
No Ripcord
If you’re interested in sophisticated pop music with distinctly adult themes (divorce, the loss of innocence, Soviet oppression in the Cold War era) then I would recommend giving the The Visitors a listen. If you think you can only stomach one new ABBA song at time, make it The Visitors. You’ll be coming back for more before you know it.
-
Off the Tracks
I’m hooked on it from first listen.
-
Sparkly, Pretty, Briiiight
So was it worth spending six months in a lather of excitement for? Absolutely yes – the medley is a rare and precious look at the genius way ABBA went about creating their pop gems, the unreleased, or rarely seen video and song extras are a joy, and the booklet by ABBA archivist Carl Magnus Palm is as richly detailed as you’d expect.
-
uDiscover Music
While there was plenty of pure, sophisticated pop throughout the record, the opening title track in particular, with its darker, almost psychedelic pop flavours, is a tantalising glimpse of where the group might have gone if they had stayed together. Billboard magazine described it as “ABBA’s first true masterpiece.”
-
T.V. Tropes
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. A 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.
Rate This Album and Leave Your Comments