20 years since the last new ABBA album! Gawd. How old does that make me feel? Bloody old!

"The Visitors" has never been my favourite ABBA album as some of you would know. Strange since it contains some of the best ABBA songs.

My memory is very hazy. I am a lot clearer about the releases of albums like "Arrival" which came out 5 years earlier. Weird.

I seem to remember that the first songs we heard were "Two For The Price Of One" and "Slipping Through My Fingers". Although not earth shattering, I quite liked the two songs and Two For The Price of One had some amusing lyrics.

Of course, by the time the album came out, both songs had lost their appeal. Some of the more amusing lyrics in Two For The Price of One had been changed and Slipping Through My Fingers had suffered by being recorded in a studio. The live version had conveyed more emotion but that had been sanitised as well. I find the studio version very bland.

I seem to remember an excited Melbourne ABBA fan, Kathy Robinson, telling us that she had heard a new ABBA song on Melbourne radio and it was the best thing ever. It was called "Cracking Up" which we seemed to think was a little bizarre.

This was of course "The Visitors (Crackin' Up)" which when I first heard it, blew me away totally. The music and the lyrics were and are sublime. 20 years later, this is still my favourite ABBA song of all time. We all had fun trying to work out what it was all about. I was in the camp who thought it was about aliens. I played the song over and over at very loud volumes. Fortunately for my ABBA-hating parents, I had moved out by then. :-)

The other two masterpieces on the album are "When All Is Said And Done" and "Like An Angel Passing Through My Room". When All Is Said And Done is a very mature song and Like An Angel Passing Through My Room is so beautiful and haunting. It still gives me goosebumps.

I liked "Head Over Heels" (even if Görel insisted on calling it "Head Over Heals"). A fun song which I enjoyed even more once we had seen the very camp clip. "Soldiers" is a plodder which has never really engaged me. Like Ian, I don't like "One Of Us" mainly because it was the single. It was all about ABBA playing safe which disappointed me. I have changed my mind several times about "I Let The Music Speak". A very good song but it didn't really fit on an ABBA album. I do like it thesedays.

I found the album to be very inconsistent and ultimately disappointing. It had a rushed feel to it, didn't hang together well and it was like the magic had gone. I remember feeling cheated that there were only 9 songs. Why wasn't the brilliant and underrated "Should I Laugh Or Cry" on there?

I didn't like the cover. You could hardly see ABBA and it was another brown one. And I hate brown. "Super Trouper" had an awful cover and it was like "The Visitors" had followed suit. I really love the cover now, especially since I have visited the room where it was taken which is breathtaking.

I am still not that keen on the album. I tend to play it for certain songs rather than the album as a whole but as I said before - the good songs are really, really, really good.

Grant Whittingham playing "Crackin' Up" at high volume in Sydney, Australia

December 16, 2001