The Visitors | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 30 November 1981 | |||
Recorded | 16 March – 14 November 1981 | |||
Studio | Polar, Stockholm | |||
Genre | Pop | |||
Length | 37:39 | |||
Label | ||||
Producer | ||||
ABBA chronology | ||||
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Singles from The Visitors | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Blender | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Daily Vault | B+[4] |
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Pitchfork | 8.6/10[6] |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Smash Hits | 8/10[8] |
The Visitors is the eighth studio album by the Swedish pop group ABBA. It was released on 30 November 1981.
With The Visitors, ABBA took several steps away from the "lighter" pop music they had recorded previously and the album is often regarded as a more complex and mature effort.[9] The opening track, "The Visitors", with its ominous synthesizer sounds and the distinctive lead vocal by Frida, announced a change in musical style. With Benny and Frida going their separate ways, the pain of splitting up was explored yet again in "When All Is Said and Done". The major hit single on the album, "One of Us", also depicted the end of a love story. Elsewhere there were Cold War themes—highly topical at the time—and further songs of isolation and regret.
The Visitors was one of the first records ever to be digitally recorded and mixed, as well as one of the earliest in history to be pressed on the CD format in 1983.[10] The Visitors has been reissued in digitally remastered form four times—first in 1997, then in 2001, again in 2005 as part of The Complete Studio Recordings box set and most recently in 2012.
The Visitors Deluxe Edition was released on 23 April 2012. As with previous releases in the Deluxe Edition series, this version offered a DVD of archive material along with CD bonus tracks – including the demo medley "From a Twinkling Star to a Passing Angel", the first previously-unreleased ABBA recordings since 1994.[11]
For four decades, The Visitors stood as ABBA's last studio album, until the release of their 2021 album, Voyage.