Abba: The lost factor.

[michael hagerty]

Here in the US, Voyage entered the Billboard 200 at number two, by far their best performance on that chart.

The artist who stopped ABBA from going to the top is an R&B artist named Summer Walker, with Still Over It.

No artist stops another artist from going to the top. What stopped ABBA is the people who chose not to buy or stream it.

And number two these days can be a pretty low bar in terms of raw numbers. So can number one.

 

[Marcos_C]

No artist stops another artist from going to the top. What stopped ABBA is the people who chose not to buy or stream it.

That was a figure of speech. But, yes, the fact that many Americans would rather listen to R&B than soft rock is a factor that helped Still Over It reach the top of the chart.

 

[anotherguyTN]

I know just enough Spanish to order Mexican food.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

"SOS" was apparently a favorite of John Lennon. He would reportedly take recording artists you wouldn't expect out to dinner and tell them how much he liked their work, so it is believable, and "SOS" was a little different, and was much more popular outside the US.

 

[JBraddock]

Abba the Movie was considered their version of A Hard Day's Night, and they just never reached that level of popularity here. I'm not even sure if they ever even toured here.

They did tour here. My sister was quite thrilled to be at the New York City show.

So a movie like that doesn't really resonate with American audiences. Clever movie, but it just couldn't have happened like that here.

Per Wikipedia/Billboard, the movie was shown in the US cities where they toured. There is a reference to Warner Brothers "finally" releasing the movie in the US in connection with the tour.

 

[vchimpanzee]

No artist stops another artist from going to the top. What stopped ABBA is the people who chose not to buy or stream it.

And number two these days can be a pretty low bar in terms of raw numbers. So can number one.

Nevertheless, Foreigner was waiting nine weeks for a girl like Olivia Newton-John.

 

[michael hagerty]

Nevertheless, Foreigner was waiting nine weeks for a girl like Olivia Newton-John.

Oh, boy---this one again.

For those not familiar, many chart freaks are still ticked off, 40 years later, that Foreigner was "robbed" of a number one single by Olivia Newton-John's "Physical", which stayed at the top of Billboard's Hot 100 chart for ten weeks.

Singles sales peaked in 1974 and began a pretty rapid decline from there on. So a high singles chart ranking meant less every year that went by.

And, as I mentioned in this very thread, groups that tended to sell albums were likely to do less well on the singles chart, unless it was a non-album single or a single that preceded an album's release. Why buy a single of a song you already have on the album (I know there are people on this board who have reasons, but trust me, most people didn't)?

So while "Physical" peaked at number one on the singles chart, and "Waiting For A Girl Like You" peaked at number two, it's instructive to look at the album charts---where Livvy went double platinum, and Foreigner went six times platinum. Unless you're totally hung up on the whole "little record, big hole" thing, far more people bought a copy of "Waiting For A Girl Like You" than bought a copy of "Physical".

 

[firepoint525]

Oh, boy---this one again.

For those not familiar, many chart freaks are still ticked off, 40 years later, that Foreigner was "robbed" of a number one single by Olivia Newton-John's "Physical", which stayed at the top of Billboard's Hot 100 chart for ten weeks.

Singles sales peaked in 1974 and began a pretty rapid decline from there on. So a high singles chart ranking meant less every year that went by.

And, as I mentioned in this very thread, groups that tended to sell albums were likely to do less well on the singles chart, unless it was a non-album single or a single that preceded an album's release. Why buy a single of a song you already have on the album (I know there are people on this board who have reasons, but trust me, most people didn't)?

So while "Physical" peaked at number one on the singles chart, and "Waiting For A Girl Like You" peaked at number two, it's instructive to look at the album charts---where Livvy went double platinum, and Foreigner went six times platinum. Unless you're totally hung up on the whole "little record, big hole" thing, far more people bought a copy of "Waiting For A Girl Like You" than bought a copy of "Physical".

Every once in a while, there will be a single mix that has something that the album version doesn't have. Most notably, "Sometimes a Fantasy" by Billy Joel. That single version (which was longer than the album version) remains a fave of mine. "I've got blisters on my blisters!" It was the fourth single from that album (Glass Houses) so it had to have SOMETHING going for it.

 

[firepoint525]

I know just enough Spanish to order Mexican food.

Same here.

 

[firepoint525]

They did tour here. My sister was quite thrilled to be at the New York City show.


Per Wikipedia/Billboard, the movie was shown in the US cities where they toured. There is a reference to Warner Brothers "finally" releasing the movie in the US in connection with the tour.

The closest that they came to me was Chicago, which was about 400 miles away from me at the time. We saw the tribute group in 2015.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Oh, boy---this one again.

For those not familiar, many chart freaks are still ticked off, 40 years later, that Foreigner was "robbed" of a number one single by Olivia Newton-John's "Physical", which stayed at the top of Billboard's Hot 100 chart for ten weeks.

Singles sales peaked in 1974 and began a pretty rapid decline from there on. So a high singles chart ranking meant less every year that went by.

And, as I mentioned in this very thread, groups that tended to sell albums were likely to do less well on the singles chart, unless it was a non-album single or a single that preceded an album's release. Why buy a single of a song you already have on the album (I know there are people on this board who have reasons, but trust me, most people didn't)?

So while "Physical" peaked at number one on the singles chart, and "Waiting For A Girl Like You" peaked at number two, it's instructive to look at the album charts---where Livvy went double platinum, and Foreigner went six times platinum. Unless you're totally hung up on the whole "little record, big hole" thing, far more people bought a copy of "Waiting For A Girl Like You" than bought a copy of "Physical".

Doesn't matter really. I didn't like either song.