The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, ABBA and Random Music-Related Thoughts

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This is going to sound snarky, for which I apologise, but the reaction of Beatles fans on Facebook to Now and Then reminded me of ABBA fans’ reaction to Voyage. Inferior material being lauded as the best ever. (I am of course a huge fan of ABBA and a big fan of the Beatles.)

I don't mind the track tbh and vastly prefer it to 'Free as a Bird' and 'Real Love', which I couldn't abide. I might even go as far as saying I quite like it. That's obviously damning it with faint praise, though. There again, despite obviously recognising their immense importance and influence, I'm not really a Beatles fan, for some reason. And to my mind, one of the hardest things for any 'classic' act is competing with their own back catalogue - especially when it's only with ersatz 'new material' as in this case. All of which makes 'Voyage' even more remarkable, I think. No, it's not ABBA greatest album. And no, it's not even ONE of their greatest albums (ranking seventh out of nine, for me). But at its best it does touch the same old stellar heights, overall it's a pretty good, varied and genuinely interesting listen and that's quite a rarity for a 'legacy' band.

I've heard the track a few times now. I'm not a Beatles fan, so the need to like it doesn't mean anything to me. It's not the grabbiest song out there but I don't think it's terrible. There's certainly a few Beatles songs I'd rank below it already. It has a kind of movie soundtrack vibe, for some reason. All that said, I'm not sure how often I'll play it again - if at all.

I'm glad that that the song was rescued. Whether it's a single is the stuff of heated debates, but the surviving Beatles were happy to endorse it, so who am I to moan? I can choose to listen or not. It's not too far from what happened with Just A Notion (albeit all members of ABBA are alive and engaged) and I know there are many who would like Just Like That and other unreleased material to be similarly resurrected to sate our completist natures. 

I think that this new Beatles track and Voyage are good examples of polarisation in fandom. There are those so utterly committed to their idols, that no criticism will be tolerated. And then there are those whose attitudes are less fixed, whose views get sneered at by both the Sacred Cow "praise, and praise only" crew, and the self-appointed arbiters of taste who think they get to decide what's cool or not. We've seen it here in many guises - whether it's in relation to TWTIA, or Voyage, or A+, or any given release or group member. It seems a little tragic that a bunch of (largely) middle-aged people should get so riled up because someone's opinion of a song/album/video/whatever differs from theirs. Nobody's obliged to like anything or even offer a reason for not liking it.

Of course, the Beatles' 60s 'rivals' the Stones have recently done a bit of a 'Voyage' with 'Hackney Diamonds', albeit after an 18-year rather than a 40-year studio-album hiatus. I certainly braced myself when I first listened to it the other day. But I have to say I was somewhat confounded and, front to back, found it really rather entertaining. Like 'Voyage', it's very much in that three/three-and-a-half stars bracket and (although lacking a genuine mega-classic, at least on first listen) is possibly a slightly more even album. Naturally, it's provoked the full range of reaction among fans and critics. Generally, though, it's been pretty well received - at least from what I've seen.

Again, it’s released on a Thursday not a Friday, as with the first two Voyage singles and Agnetha’s single. Why do they do that? Surely much of the physical sales are going to be made by pre-orders on the Thursday. Is it that they think there will be more publicity on a Thursday and less interest on a Friday because it’s the start of the weekend? That overall sales/streams might be higher so it’s worth sacrificing a slightly higher chart position?

Is it really 18 years since the last Rolling Stones album? I thought they were quite prolific. Then again, 18 years is 2005, which doesn’t seem quite so long ago. How many of them are left now, two or three?

Alan, I think your instinct is right. More publicity on a Thursday and less on a Friday/weekend.

So why not release on a Monday? Simply, week one would have 4 days sales, diminishing week 2 sales. Released on a Thursday, only giving up a few hours sales.

This is especially true for the Voyage singles and Now + Then which were "news". It's not just physical sales for singles, which are tiny and probably not pre-ordered in the same way as albums but streaming too - which is important in the Singles Chart. I don't think the Agnetha single needed to go down this route.

The Rolling Stones had a 2020 brand new single, Living in a Ghost Town - released at the height of lockdown. Very appropriate for the time. It got to #1 in Germany, their charts based on revenue and #61 in the UK, our charts streaming based. It got to #2 on the Sales Chart which seems closer to a revenue based chart than streaming based chart.

Pretty sure the 40 year gap between albums from the same original band members is some sort of record.

I can't think of anyone even coming close.

I liked Bjorn's quip at that re-launch on 2/09/21 where he said somehing like:

"Following the old adage: never let more than 40 years pass between albums". It raised a chuckle.

While I am not the greatest fan of Voyage, I give it 3 stars out of 5, I am not the biggest critic either.

But hats off to
1. At least a couple of brilliant songs.
2. Getting back after 40 years - and sounding great
3. Being age appropriate and not wanting to be "cool" 4. The huge commercial success of the album. This was not inevitable - despite the success of the old hits via GOLD and Mamma Mia!

The video is quite scary in my opinion, but in the age of AI, probably what we’re going to have to get used to more and more in the years to come.



You get the four of them in the 60s, the three of them circa 1995, the two of them now but mixed with the two dead ones as they were in the 60s, with the living two also getting that treatment in places. Is the 60s footage real or deep fake/AI-generated?

As I say, scary. I heard a bit of Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 today where he played a piece of what sounded like his voice, but fake and AI-generated. It sounded exactly like him.

In years to come, we’re not going to know what’s real and what isn’t.

I was thinking something similar, richard. In my mind, the song calls for a piano-based arrangement with moody strings. I seem to remember Benny once saying that he'd've loved to produce a John Lennon album. I'd like to hear this new song with Mr. Andersson at the desk.

jj , I'm sure those sorts of small adjustments between words and music - adding a note or lengthening a note or eliminating a note to accommodate a melody to a lyric - happen quite a bit. Offhand, I couldn't give specific examples of it with regard to Benny and Bjorn's songwriting, but no doubt they're there.

I think one of the great composers of standard songs of the past, whose name escapes me, wouldn't change a note for his poor lyricist. But I bet songwriters who write both the words and music to their songs - Joni Mitchell, especially, springs to mind - can be very flexible!

Funny you should mention TDBYC, Johnny, because it has always struck me as a lyrically-driven song. So I wonder if - unlike the the vast majority of their songs where, I understand, the music came first - Björn, on this rare occasion, wrote the lyrics first.

Note to Alan:

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought this thread was intended to be for ad-hoc or off-the-cuff, non-musical, random thoughts/comments. At least I wonder if that was The Rubber Ball Man's idea for this thread? Recently the thread has specific music-related topics that perhaps could be more suitably posted elsewhere on the forum? Just a suggestion. What do you think? Maybe, because so few of us post, it doesn't matter much!

They only get away with it by pronouncing 'usual' as 'use-yull' rather than 'use-you-ull' - so it's definitely a bit of a shoe-horn job.

Valid point. I wasn’t sure how to split it as even The Beatles posts often mention other things. Apologies for the slightly clumsy title I’ve given it, but tried to allow for everything that’s been mentioned since the first Beatles post.

Early indications are that The Beatles will be #1 next week. It would be their first since 1969.

It makes me wish ABBA could have got a #1 with one of their first two Voyage singles. Yes, I know veteran acts don't have #1's now...well maybe they do now. Check out next week's chart.

I think The Beatles' PR was better with "last ever song" plus plenty of publicity about physical singles.

But I guess with the announcement.of a new album two months after the Voyage singles, fans just waited for that.