Voyage by ABBA: Album Review

It’s finally here. ABBA’s final album, Voyage, was released on November 5th. I listened to it right away and wrote down my initial thoughts about each song, but decided to hold off on writing a full review. I wanted to take some time for the novelty to wear off a bit and for me to be able to listen to the songs a few times over the course of a couple of days. Now that I’ve done that, here are my thoughts on Voyage:

I wrote a bit about the first two singles off of the album - one of which was “I Still Have Faith In You” - in a previous post, so I won’t repeat myself. In the context of the album though, I think it sets “Voyage” up nicely. If this is indeed a voyage, “I Still Have Faith In You” is an assurance to the listeners, in quality and explicitly in the lyrics, that it will be a worthwhile one.

From there, the first stop of the journey appears to be Ireland. “When You Danced With Me” has a clear Celtic influence. Maybe my own bias is at play here, but the combination of two things I really enjoy (Celtic music and ABBA) is a welcome surprise. My personal preferences aside, the song is uplifting, yet nostalgic and the lyrics are simple, yet poetic.

“Little Things” is the first bump in the road for Voyage. I’m not quite sure why a Christmas song was included on the album. Maybe as December approaches and “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey slowly awakens from its slumber to rain terror upon the world in the form of dominant radio airplay, ABBA decided they wanted in on that. Or maybe they just wanted to write a Christmas song. The instrumental is okay. It’s not too over-the-top like many Christmas songs and doesn’t seem that out of place in the context of the album. What does seem out of place is the strange beginning to the second verse and the children’s choir at the end which provides a confusing list of “little things”:

“Like the precious jewels on rings

Or a music box that will fit in socks

Tiny elves with wings

Not as big as queens and their kings”

The list seems completely random and is used more just to make the lines rhyme than to add anything to the song. This is most prominent with the specification that the tiny elves are not as big as queens and kings. Elves, in general, are understood to be smaller than the average person, but when they’re referred to as “tiny,” I don’t think anyone assumed they would be anywhere near the size of queens and/or kings (also a strange thing to mention, as I assume there’s no significant difference between the size of us commoners and the size of monarchs).

I’m nitpicking, but in general, the song is a bit strange, out of place, and it fails to build upon itself at all.

Moving on, I already wrote about “Don’t Shut Me Down” in my last post about ABBA. It’s a refreshing pivot from “Little Things” though, as it has lyrics that make sense, fits well on the album, and features a good amount of variation.

“Just A Notion” was also released before the rest of the album, but I wanted to wait to write about it until I did my album review. This is a song that was originally recorded in 1978, but it didn’t make it onto ABBA's Voulez-Vous album. As far as my thoughts on it, I honestly don't have too many. To me, it kind of sounds like an AI bot was tasked with creating an ABBA song. All of those common ABBA elements are there, but they all feel a bit cobbled together. I don’t dislike the song, it just doesn’t do anything for me.

The second bump in the road comes with “I Can Be That Woman,” which is unfortunate because I think the song has a lot of potential. It’s an emotional topic, of someone who struggled with addiction and their attempt to reconcile with their significant other. The execution, however, is disappointing.

Firstly, I didn’t even know this song was about addiction until I read that it was supposed to be. There is one mention of the man wondering if the narrator is drunk, but other than that, I would have guessed the narrator's significant other was the one with addiction issues, seeing as, throughout the course of the song, he is described as “bleary-eyed” and “frail.” He gets up, kicks a chair, starts swearing, and gives the narrator an emphatic “screw you!” I don’t know the frustration of seeing someone close to me deal with addiction so I’m in no place to make these kinds of claims, but these do not seem like healthy reactions towards someone attempting to make things right.

Another detail I didn’t pick up on at all is that the song is supposed to be a country song. I know next to nothing about country music, but I guess Tammy Wynette was a big country star and so the dog in the song named Tammy is a nod towards her. But regarding that dog...why? Her presence in the first verse makes for a “tee-hee” sort of moment when it is revealed that the “Tammy” who the man is sleeping on the couch with is just a dog. I think it’s out of place in this type of song, but fine, let’s move past it. However, the dog shows up in both of the remaining verses after that. It just doesn’t feel necessary, and I don’t understand the decision to include it, especially so prominently.

One last problem I had with the song is that the background vocals just sounded incredibly awkward. I think "I Can Be That Woman" could have been very moving, but it just doesn’t deliver.

Having listened to “I Still Have Faith In You,” “Don’t Shut Me Down,” and “Just A Notion” previously, I skipped those during my first playthrough of this album. That left me with consecutive disappointments in “Little Things” and “I Can Be That Woman” and I was beginning to have my doubts about the rest of the album. Luckily, “Keep An Eye On Dan” provided me with some renewed hope. It instantly reminded me of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight),” but the song comes into its own as it goes on. My one issue is that the instrumental and lyrics don’t quite match up. While the instrumental sounds cinematic and almost triumphant (if not a bit dark), the lyrics are somber, about a divorced mother who has to share custody of her son and struggles to remain composed each time she has to say goodbye to him. While the song might not be greater than the sum of its parts, the parts of “Keep An Eye On Dan” are great in their own right and the outro’s nod to “S.O.S” is a nice addition.

I don’t want to call “Bumblebee” the third bump in the road for this album, because I think it’s a nice little song, but the flow of the lyrics feels very awkward at times. The pauses in the middle of words, rushing through parts of some of the lines, it all just feels a bit clunky. Besides that, there’s not much to say here. I don’t dislike it, but I don’t think I’ll listen to it much, if at all, after today.

At this point, there are two songs left on the album. During my first playthrough, I was feeling disenchanted by the time “Bumblebee” finished. I had no reason to, as five out of the eight songs at that point were enjoyable. Again, I think it might have been due to me skipping the three (good) songs that had been released earlier. However, even if the rest of the album was exclusively made up of “Little Things” and “I Can Be That Woman” repeated four times each, “No Doubt About It” would have redeemed it all. I absolutely adore this song. The moment it began, I instantly told myself not to get my hopes up too high. It starts out so well, I was sitting there with my fingers crossed hoping the rest of the song would deliver, but feeling a bit pessimistic that it wouldn’t.

Luckily, it did. I don’t know what that instrument is in the introduction (a banjo? A sitar?), but I love it. The song is upbeat from the start, but as soon as the verse floods in it’s like a punch in the face in the best way possible. The energy is great, and the lyrics flow really well. It’s not as serious as some of the other songs on the album, but unlike “Keep An Eye On Dan,” both the instrumental and the lyrics seem to have gotten the same memo. It doesn’t stick to the same formula for its whole runtime either. Having verses/choruses/bridges/etc. that sound different from each other is generally a standard and not an achievement in music, but it can be hard to keep the quality of each of these parts extremely high throughout. “No Doubt About It” accomplishes it. Random slow parts in otherwise upbeat songs usually bother me, but this time it fits, providing a small break at the end of the verses before launching back into the chorus. In my opinion, this is the best song off of the album; no doubt about it. I think it could even belong among the songs featured on the famous “ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits” album, but I’m not going to make a claim like that until I’ve had time to listen to those songs again, keeping this one in mind.

As a side note, I noticed some of the more negative reviews about this album didn’t mention this song at all. It wasn’t that they mentioned it in passing or gave a sentence about it, it just wasn’t brought up, which I find a bit strange.

And just like that, we’re at the last song. After the liveliness of “No Doubt About It,” ABBA takes it down a notch (well, quite a few notches, actually). This isn’t just the last song of the album, though. This is, almost certainly, their last song ever. For their final number, the band decides to reflect. “Ode to Freedom” is a philosophical song. It’s not actually an ode to freedom, despite the title. Instead, it's a song about wishing to be able to write an ode to freedom. Freedom is a concept that can mean different things to different people depending on their situation. The members of ABBA display that they understand this. The song doesn’t try to do too much. It says what it wants to say and then it ends. I’ve been rambling on for quite a while, so I’ll take a page out of ABBA’s book here and wrap it up.

This may not be my favorite ABBA album, and I may dislike some of the songs off of it, but I’m certainly glad it exists. It was a welcome surprise and the finished product is a great final chapter to their legacy.