1. People Need Love

2. He Is Your Brother

3. Ring Ring

4. Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough)

5. Waterloo

6. Honeyhoney

7. So Long

8. I Doi Doi Doi Doi Do

9. Sos

10. Mamma Mia

11. Fernando

12. Dancing Queen

13. Moneymoneymoney

14. Knowing Meknowing You

15. The Name Of The Game

16. Take A Chance On Me

17. Eagle

18. Summer Night City

19. Chiquitita

20. Does Your Mother Know

21. Rock Me *

22. Hasta Manana *

23. Voulez-Vous

24. Angel Eyes

25. Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight )

26. I Have A Dream

27. The Winner Takes It All

28. Super Trouper

29. On And On And On

30. Lay All Your Love On Me

31. One Of Us

32. When All Is Said And Done

33. Head Over Heels

34. The Visitors (Crackin' Up)

35. The Day Before You Came

36. Under Attack

37. Thank You For The Music

38. Ring Ring (1974 Remixsingle Version)

All Music

The titles of hits compilations always deal in superlatives: "Greatest," "Best," "Very Best" — but the compilers of this ABBA collection have a special problem justifying the release of yet another such album after the multi-platinum success of 1992's ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits and its 1993 follow-up, More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits. (Indeed, the band was never shy about repackaging, issuing a Greatest Hits LP in 1976 as only its third U.S. album, followed by Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 in 1979 and The Singles [The First Ten Years] in 1982.) They have settled on The Definitive Collection and done their best to live up to the name. The 37-track double CD contains "for the first time exclusively collected in one package, each and every single as conceived and released by ABBA and their record company Polar Music between 1972 and 1982," writes annotator Carl Magnus Palm. That accounts for 30 tracks, with another five consisting of songs individual countries released as singles, notably "When All Is Said and Done" and "The Visitors," which Atlantic in the U.S. put out for chart entries. The remaining two tracks are a single remix of "Ring Ring," being given its first American release, and an extended dance remix of "Voulez-Vous," not previously released commercially. The remastered sound is excellent, and the nearly chronological order of the sequencing allows an appreciation of the band's development from light Europop to a disco-influenced sound and onto a more energetic, new wave-influenced approach, all with compelling melodies and dense arrangements in a Phil Spector Wall of Sound production style. Palm's informative liner notes tell the ABBA story single by single. (Who knew that "The Visitors" is about "the fears of dissidents in the Soviet Union"?) If this doesn't satisfy you, go ahead and buy the group's entire catalog.