ABBA - Gold: Greatest Hits [DVD & 2 CDs] (CD)

All Music Guide

For this entry in its “Deluxe Sound+Vision" series of reissues, Universal Music Entertainment (UME) has repackaged two ABBA hits CDs with an ABBA DVD. ABBA Gold Greatest Hits, originally released in 1992, is a 19track disc oriented primarily toward the group's chart successes in the U.K. and containing all but two of their 20 Top Ten British hits. A 20track followup, More ABBA Gold More ABBA Hits, released in 1993, fills in the missing hits and adds lots of LP tracks. Also in 1993, there was a home video companion to ABBA Gold Greatest Hits, containing music videos of all 19 of its songs. As a group that rarely toured, ABBA made promotional films for its singles from the beginning, long before the advent of MTV and other allmusic TV channels. In 2003, the video collection was reissued on DVD, adding a 25minute documentary on ABBA, consisting mostly of interviews with group member Björn Ulvaeus and engineer Michael B. Tretow, and a music video created out of other videos for a 1992 U....K. reissue of the hit “Dancing Queen." UME has taken the easy way out in putting these three discs together. It would have been a better idea to use the comprehensive twoCD 2001 compilation The Definitive Collection, which contains all the group's singles in chronological order, and then assemble a comparable DVD using more of their videos than are found here. In the documentary, “The History," the viewer is teased with excerpts from videos for such songs as “Summer Night City" and “The Day Before You Came" that are not contained in full on the DVD. Why not? Because that would have taken more effort, that's why. As it is, the videos that are included have a consistency of look, which is not surprising since all but one of them (“I Have a Dream," drawn from the TV special ABBA in Concert) were directed by Lasse Hallström, who is content to have the group members look into the camera and pretend to sing and play most of the time, with a few editing effects and a few outdoor and concert scenes thrown in here and there. For the most part, the approach works, as it emphasizes singers Agnetha Fältskog, a lithe blonde frequently exhibiting a pained expression to match the melancholy lyrics, and AnniFrid Lyngstad, who goes through a variety of shades of red hair and hairdos. ABBA Gold Greatest Hits, despite its shortcomings, remains the bestselling album in the ABBA catalog, and UME clearly just wanted to create a CD/DVD version of what has become an important catalog title. At that, it has succeeded, although one could have hoped for something more complete and better organized. - William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Read more Less