Critics divided over ABBA's comeback album
ABBA’s eagerly awaited comeback album has received mixed reviews with one critic saying: “No thank you for the music.”
The Swedish band has burst back onto the scene with their first new body of work in 39 years.
Fans had said they were “shaking” with excitement when the band teased their comeback and then unveiled two new tracks - ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’ and ‘I Still Have Faith In You’.
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But Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson and co have now dropped their album, 'Voyage', and the reaction has been decidedly lukewarm.
The Guardian gave it just two out of five stars, saying “the glamour promised by this album’s two terrific singles goes horribly unfulfilled”.
Jude Rogers said in a review entitled "No thank you for the music": “In the past, they excelled when they twisted the sounds of their times in their own way, when they were within glam, disco and electronic pop but also apart from these genres; when their idiosyncrasies elevated them, rather than diminished them.
"If only they had stopped at those two knowing songs, leaving the rest to our dazzling imaginations.”
It also got two stars from The i, which said it was a “strange, confused and overly sentimental attempt to recreate the magic”.
Reviewer Kate Solomon said Christmas song 'Little Things' was “nauseating” and concluded: “There’s a sort of Sound Of Music feel to the whole endeavour; a slightly daggy, overly sentimental attempt at recapturing something that had already been lost.”
It only got three out of five stars in The Telegraph, with reviewer Neil McCormick saying ABBA had “drifted a long way from 'Waterloo'”.
However, The Daily Mail gave it four stars, saying it “rekindles the heartfelt storytelling and melodic genius” that made ABBA such a success in the first place.
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And 'Voyage' went down a storm with The Independent’s Helen Brown, who gave it five stars and called it a “terrific, family-friendly smorgasbord of a record that delivers all the classic ABBA flavours”.
Watch: ABBA return with new album