Robbed hit of the Week 5/12/12 - ABBA's "The Visitors"...

ABBA - "The Visitors (Crackin' Up)"

from the album The Visitors (1981)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #63

This week's "Robbed Hit of the Week" is the title cut to Swedish legends ABBA's final studio album. By 1981, both married couples in the band had divorced (Bjorn and Agnetha in 1978, Benny and Frida in 1981), and the resulting post-split album is rife with jealousy, anger, and regret, as well as a touch of Cold-War angst. That is definitely the case with "The Visitors (Crackin' Up)", which detailed the paranoia of Soviet dissidents to a space-age musical backdrop. It was the second single released in the US from the album (after the mournful "When All Is Said And Done"), and while it failed to make the top-40, it reached the top-10 of the dance chart, and was one of their biggest hits in the gay clubs.

The song never was released as a single on its own elsewhere, but remains a gem in their catalog of work.

British tribute act ABBAcadabra updated the song a decade later, which is a respectable job...

After The Visitors the band unofficially dissolved, and has been one of the biggest rumored reunions that will probably never take place. Agnetha and Frida would both go on to have top-40 singles ("Can't Shake Loose" and "I Know There's Something Going On), while Benny & Bjorn together as writers of the Broadway musical Chess would also enjoy a top-40 hit of their own as well with "One Night In Bangkok".