ABBA Reunion Prompts New U.K. ‘Gold’ Rush
Their 1992 compilation is rising in sales yet again.
Last week’s news that the four members of Swedish superstars had reunited to record two new songs, their first fresh material for 35 years, has led to a sales spike in the UK for their astonishingly successful Gold compilation.
On the newly-published album chart published by the Official Charts Company, publicity surrounding the reunion causes the hits collection to rebound 51-15. The album was in the top 40 only four weeks ago, but the new position is its highest on the survey since it stood at No. 14 for a week just under ten years ago, in September 2008.
It’s the latest in a collection of UK chart achievements for Gold which few albums can match. It was released in 1992, debuting at No. 1 in the first week of October that year. It would be the first of eight weeks at the summit, remarkably in three very distinct periods. The album went back to the top for five non-consecutive weeks in the spring and early summer of 1999, and returned there for two more weeks in August 2008.
This week’s chart placing is the record’s 835th in the UK top 100, of which 58 have been in the top ten and 103 in the top 20. Gold is one of only four compilation albums to log a year or more inside the top ten, the others being the Carpenters’ The Singles 1969-1973, Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits and The Best of the Beach Boys Vol. 1.
The 58 aggregate weeks spent by Gold in the top ten place it 14th in that all-time longevity list; another Simon & Garfunkel album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, holds the record with 135 weeks.
‘Summer Night City,’ one of ABBA’s hits that didn’t make the Gold album but was on the More ABBA Gold set that came out in 1993, was released for the recent Record Store Day on clear/yellow splatter vinyl.
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