Music / Voyage (2021)

Voyage is the ninth and final studio album by ABBA and their first studio album in 40 years. It was released on November 5, 2021.

All ten songs are ballads, but not all the lyrics fit the tone, as is ABBA's style.

In 2022, a virtual concert was created for this album, featuring some of ABBA's most iconic songs, at the purpose-built ABBA Arena near Pudding Mill Lane at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, UK, with an open run up to 2026.

Tracklist

1. "I Still Have Faith in You"
2. "When You Danced with Me"
3. "Little Things"
4. "Don't Shut Me Down"
5. "Just a Notion"
6. "I Can Be That Woman"
7. "Keep an Eye on Dan"
8. "Bumblebee"
9. "No Doubt About It"
10. "Ode to Freedom"

Tropes included on the album:

• The Alcoholic: Implied about the woman in "I Can Be That Woman".
• Amicable Exes: "Keep an Eye on Dan" is about the son of divorced parents, specifically the parent with primary custody dropping him off at the weekend parent's for the first time. They have no trouble talking together.
• Animal Motifs: The narrator of "No Doubt About It" describes herself as a wild cat.
• Bookends: This album has a similar tone to Waterloo, the band's first international album.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: "Don't Shut Me Down" has ABBA's digital avatars (ABBAtars) asking the audience to let them live.
• Call-Back:
  • "When You Danced with Me" is like a more upbeat version of "Dance (While the Music Still Goes On)".
  • "Keep an Eye on Dan" has a bit of "SOS" at the end, suggesting that it's a Sequel Song.
  • "Don't Shut Me Down" contains a piano sweep, like the start of "Dancing Queen".
• Children Are Innocent: Both "Don't Shut Me Down" and "Little Things" invoke this by mentioning children playing in the opening lines. "Keep An Eye On Dan" subverts it, as Dan's mother believes he's up to something, but also that he can't help it.
• Christmas Songs: "Little Things" takes place on Christmas morning.
• Dream Within a Dream: Invoked in "Don't Shut Me Down". It works two ways, thanks to the song's double meaning:
  • The point-of-view character is speaking to their romantic interest, and suspects that person is Loving a Shadow that is actually just as if not more fantastic in reality.
  • The point-of-view character is a digital avatar and as such the inner dream; the digital world the show takes place in is the outer dream, and it/she's Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
  • In a meta sense, the digital show could be the inner dream, and reality the outer.
• Dual-Meaning Chorus: "Don't Shut Me Down" can be taken as a Silly Love Song, or as an open letter to their fans who will see them on their "Voyage" virtual tour, where they use digital avatars. Bjorn in fact joked in an interview that it was the latter, more specifically about the avatars not wanting to be literally shut down.
• Exiled to the Couch: Apparently the case with the man in "I Can Be That Woman". Their dog Tammy joins him.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • The man in "I Can Be That Woman" apparently couldn't help not being better because his girlfriend disappointed him.
  • Dan in "Keep An Eye On Dan" can't help acting out, seeing as his parents are divorced.
• Friendship Song: "I Still Have Faith In You" is about the band's history and reunion.
  We do have it in us
  New spirit has arrived
  The joy and the sorrow
  We have a story and it survived
• Grand Finale: Bjorn and Benny have stated in interviews that this album will definitely be the last by the group.
• Green Aesop: "Bumblebee" muses about what the world would be like without them.
• Kick the Dog: Tammy, the dog in "I Can Be That Woman", suffers from her humans' abusive relationship.
• Loving a Shadow: The narrator in "Just A Notion" daydreams about being in love with a person who may or may not exist.
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • "When You Danced With Me" is a triumphant-sounding song with melancholy lyrics.
  • "Keep an Eye on Dan" has a menacing melody, with lyrics about parents who love their little boy.
  • "I Can Be That Woman" is a calm song about an abusive relationship.
  • "No Doubt About It" is a cheery mea culpa song.
  • "Bumblebee" zigzags this. The melody is very calm, with lyrics going from calm to dread and back to calm while listening to the bumblebees in the garden.
• No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: "Don't Shut Me Down" acknowledges that this isn't the ABBA of the seventies, but a combination of then and now.
• Pet the Dog: Tammy, the dog who symbolizes the relationship in "I Can Be That Woman", gets a happy, or at least hopeful ending.
• Precision F-Strike: In "I Can Be That Woman". A typical argument ends with the guy saying "Screw you!".
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The couple in "No Doubt About It".
• Sequel Song:
  • "When You Danced With Me" is cheerfully nostalgic about the break-up in "Dance (While the Music Still Goes On)".
  • "No Doubt About It" sounds like a POV-quel of "Head Over Heels".
  • "Keep An Eye On Dan" ends on a couple of bars from "SOS", suggesting the narrator who realized her relationship was at an end in that song is the one who is new to sharing custody with her ex in this song.
• Shout-Out:
  • "I Still Have Faith in You" features the line "new spirit has arrived", a nod to the album "Teen Spirit" by A-Teens, the full band name being ABBA Teens.
  • "Don't Shut Me Down" uses the phrase "dream within a dream", a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
  • The boyfriend in "No Doubt About It" is described as always "bending like a willow", a reference to the Tao Te Ching, wherein the willow is presented as a good example for handling conflicts, since it survives storms by being flexible instead of rigid.
  • The title of "Ode to Freedom" seems like a shout-out to Björn Afzelius's "Sång Til Friheten" (lit. "song to freedom"). That song genuinely praises freedom, however.
• That Man Is Dead: Subverted in "Don't Shut Me Down". "That man" isn't dead, but he is forty years older and more experienced.
  I'm not the one you knew
  I'm now and then combined
  And I'm asking you to have an open mind
• This Is Not That Trope: "Ode to Freedom" has the narrator explain why they will never write an ode to freedom.
• Title Drop: Almost all the songs have the title as the first line in the chorus. Exceptions are "Ode To Freedom", which doesn't have a chorus, but drops the title several times in the verses; and "Bumblebee" plays with it by only dropping the word "bumblebees". "I Can Be That Woman" drops it at the end of the chorus instead.
• Womanchild: The narrator of "No Doubt About It" admits that she acts childishly.

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