The Impossible Dream
This is where the story ends. This is goodbye. By Jim Irvin.
Ludvig Andersson (3)
Here they go again: Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus (left) and Benny Andersson at the controls; (below) Anni-
Frid Lyngstad (left) and Agnetha Fältskog.
Abba
★★★
Voyage
UNIVERSAL. CD/DL/LP
THEY SAY THEY never said never, but they may as well have. It was reasonably assumed that something like this would never happen. But having happened, what did they use the occasion to do? Reassert their majesty? Rewrite history? Act like 40 years hadn’t passed? Well, no, no and no.
Voyage is a carefully measured, somewhat downbeat final word. A dignified line drawn under a unique saga, one of the more extraordinary in pop history. The story ends, it turns out, with neither bang nor whimper, but with a wistful, mature summation, as four people in their seventies say goodbye to their pop lives with affection, skill and a particular melancholy that one doesn’t hear too often.