Gold: Greatest Hits

1	Dancing Queen 3:51
2	Knowing Me, Knowing You 4:03
3	Take a Chance on Me 4:06
4	Mamma Mia 3:33
5	Lay All Your Love on Me 4:35
6	Super Trouper 4:13
7	I Have a Dream 4:42
8	The Winner Takes It All 4:54
9	Money, Money, Money 3:06
10	S.O.S. 3:20
11	Chiquitita 5:24
12	Fernando 4:14
13	Voulez-Vous 5:10
14	Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) 4:52
15	Does Your Mother Know 3:13
16	One of Us 3:57
17	The Name of the Game 4:53
18	Thank You for the Music 3:49
19	Waterloo 2:48

Barnes & Noble

It's hard to believe that it all started with "Waterloo," a song built around the unlikeliest of metaphors for love. Sweden's Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with the tune; what followed was an impressive and dominant world stardom that lasted for the next six or seven years. The group was never that big in the U.S. (only four Top Ten hits), but just about anyone alive at the time can hum a handful or two of the group's melodies. "Waterloo," it turns out, was songwriters Ulvaeus and Andersson's most ambitious lyrical turn; for the rest of their hits you get slighter stuff -- earnest recitals of true love and exhortations to dance from Fältskog and Lyngstad -- set to a nonthreatening MOR pop production that can make the Carpenters seem daring. So why do we still love ABBA? Melodrama aside, there's something at once naive and unprepossessing about the foursome's best singles -- the warmth and openness of the chorus to "S.O.S.," the grinding, driving background vocals to "Take a Chance on Me," the simple drama of "Fernando." Bill Wyman

All Music Guide

ABBA's 19-song Gold collection was the first hits compilation prepared specifically for the CD format by the 1970s supergroup, and, appearing after a period of several years in which their music had been off the market, was a welcome addition to the catalog. It is still the simplest and most straightforward collection of the group's material that it is possible to buy. Bruce Eder