ABBA to Release First New Song in 18 Years

Abba performs at Wembley Arena in 1979.

Peter Still/Redferns

ABBA have announced plans to reissue their final album, The Visitors, with a previously unreleased song on April 23rd. "From a Twinkling Star to a Passing Angel," a demo recorded around the time The Visitors was released in 1981, will be the first new ABBA recording released since the box set Thank You for the Music was issued in 1994.

The new version of The Visitors will also include six previously released bonus tracks and a DVD featuring rare and unreleased footage from the Swedish pop band's archives, including their last-ever live performance on the BBC's Late Late Breakfast Show in December of 1982.

ABBA disbanded in 1982 and have since refused to reunite. The band even declined to get back together for their induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

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