Deviations from Select Albums 4: 116. ABBA

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On this work the album's front and back covers are placed side by side with each other and part of the white background has been converted to black.

ABBA The Album was released in Scandinavia on 12 December 1977 through Polar Music, but due to the massive pre-orders the UK pressing plants were

not able to press sufficient copies before Christmas 1977 and so it was not released in the UK until January 1978. The album was released in conjunction

with ABBA: The Movie, with several of the songs featured in the film.

Polar's official cover featured an entirely white background, and is the basis for current CD versions. However, Epic Records' original UK release of the LP
featured a blue background on the front cover, fading to white at the bottom. It also featured a gatefold sleeve. The back cover was altered, incorporating
a similar photo of ABBA to that used elsewhere in the world for the inner sleeve, and referencing tracks included in ABBA: The Movie. The inner gatefold
was designed to look like an air mail envelope, similar to the style later used for Gracias Por La Música and even had a photo of ABBA incorporated into a
stamp in the corner. wikipedia

We had a vinyl copy of this album as part of our family's record collection in 1978.

Photo by Barry Levine/Mirage, album design by Rune Soderqvist, illustrations by Rune Soderqvist and Bjorn Andersson.
Album produced by Bjorn Andersson & Benny Ulvaeus. Polar, Epic (UK), Atltantic (US) 1977.

ABBA's fifth album was a marked step forward for the group, having evolved out of Europop music into a world-class rock act over their previous
two albums, they now proceeded to absorb and assimilate some of the influences around them, particularly the laid-back California sound of
Fleetwood Mac (curiously, like ABBA, then a band with two couples at its center), as well as some of the attributes of progressive rock. That
they did this without compromising their essential virtues as a pop ensemble makes this album seem even more extraordinary, though at the
time nobody bothered to analyze it - The Album was simply an incredibly popular release, yielding two British number one singles in "The Name
of the Game" and "Take a Chance on Me" (which made the Top Five in America, their second-best showing after "Dancing Queen"), and achieving
the quartet's highest-ever showing on the U.S. LP charts, reaching the Top 20 and selling a million copies in six months.
AllMusic review by William Ruhlmann

ABBA: The Album reached number 1 in many territories. In the UK it debuted at the top and remained there for seven weeks, ending up as the
third biggest selling album of the year (behind the movie soundtrack LPs of Saturday Night Fever and Grease). In the US it became their highest
charting album, where during 1978 ABBA undertook a big promotional campaign. Due to the Cold War, Western music was actively discouraged
throughout Eastern Europe at the time. Despite this, ABBA: The Album sold an unprecedented one million copies in Poland in 1977, exhausting
the country's entire allocation of foreign currency. In Russia, only 200,000 copies were permitted to be pressed; however, demand within the
USSR indicated they could have sold 40 million copies. wikipedia

(A) Eagle - Take a Chance on Me - One Man, One Woman, The Name of the Game

(B) Move On - Hole in Your Soul - The Girl with the Golden Hair: Three Scenes from a Mini-Musical: Thank You for the Music - I Wonder (Departure) - I'm a Marionette

"Eagle" live from Superstellina2012 on YouTube.