ABBA’s ‘Happy New Year’ Returns In Limited Clear Vinyl Edition
The track from ‘Super Trouper’ is being pressed as a limited edition single on different-coloured vinyl to celebrate each new year.
ABBA’s anthemic ‘Happy New Year’ will be available, for fans who are quick off the mark, as a collector’s edition, 7-inch, clear vinyl single with unique artwork. The track from the group’s 1980 Super Trouper album will be limited to 4000 copies worldwide, and released by Polar/USM on 6 December.
‘Happy New Year’ is being pressed as a limited edition single on different-coloured vinyl each year to celebrate the new year. The new release follows 2018’s white vinyl run of just 3000 copies, which sold out in no time. The b-side of the 2019 edition is, once again, the Spanish language version of the song, ‘Felicidad.’
Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA wrote ‘Happy New Year’ during a working holiday in Barbados. The song had the working title ‘Daddy Don’t Get Drunk On Christmas Day,’ for which the backing track was recorded in February 1980 with vocals, including the lead by Agnetha Fältskog, added in April. The video was made in the autumn, around the time that Super Trouper was being released as the quartet’s seventh studio album.
‘Happy New Year’ was released as a single in certain countries at the time, such as Holland, Brazil and Portugal, but became known in others as an album favourite. It went on to greater chart activity in later years, becoming a top five hit in ABBA’s native Sweden in 2008 and again the following year, when it also became a top five success in Norway.
The track returned to the Swedish top ten in 2010 and now, in the streaming era, reappears regularly on many charts around the world around the turn of the year. In 1999, there was a cover version of ‘Happy New Year’ by the ABBA tribute quartet A*Teens, who were Stockholm-based and had substantial success around Europe, including a No. 1 album in Sweden in 1999 with The ABBA Generation. Their remake of ‘Happy New Year’ peaked at No. 4 in Sweden and went to No. 12 in Denmark.
Benny Andersson revisited the melody of the song, as a slow solo, on his Piano album, released in September 2018. The album was No. 1 in Sweden for four weeks, and made the top 20 in the UK, Norway and Australia.
The limited edition, clear vinyl ‘Happy New Year’ single is released on 6 December. Pre-order it here.
Listen to the best of ABBA on Apple Music and Spotify.
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