A welcome addition to the ABBA bookshelf
A new book, ABBA Gold Hits by Craig Halstead & Chris Cadman, has joined the growing ranks of ABBA books released over the past few years.Uniquely, this book doesn't try to tell the ABBA history, or to analyse their songs. It simply concentrates on ABBA's worldwide hit singles.
Part 1 lists all the ABBA hits singles alphabetically, with chart information and anecdotes about each single. Also included are some of the international hits that individual members were involved with (Agnetha and Frida solo and Chess singles), plus a number of high-profile cover versions. Occasionally the text gets annoying with the repeated "so and so song was not a hit in such and such country", when singles weren't even released in those territories. But that's just a little quibble - it doesn't really detract that much from everything else the book has to offer.
Sprinkled throughout Part 1 to break up all that raw data are several pages of trivia, or aside information about various ABBA or solo releases, plus some pictures of single sleeves, sheet music and ABBA Magazine covers.Part 2 details the hits by country, where the information is broken down a number of different ways - straight chronologically, lists of the biggest hits, gold and platinum awards, hit cover versions, related artists, that sort of thing.
ABBA Gold Hits is available either as a paperback, or downloadable in PDF or Microsoft Reader formats. The downloadable versions are actually the cheaper (and quicker) option, but unfortunately you don't get the cover image with those versions. See the Further information link below for ordering information.
ABBA Gold Hits looks like another welcome addition to the ABBA bibliography.
Further information @ Authors Online
17 May 2005
