Gracias Por La Música

1980 ABBA album

Gracias Por La Música is a Spanish language album by Swedish pop group ABBA, released in Spain on 5 April 1980 and Latin America on May 10. Gracias Por La Música was originally released due to the unexpected surge in popularity for the group in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Argentina after the release of the Spanish language versions of "Chiquitita" and "I Have a Dream" in 1979. These tracks were both released as singles and went on to become big hits. Encouraged by this success, the band therefore decided to record another eight tracks in Spanish and release a full length album especially for the Latin American market. The album was also released in ABBA's native Sweden on June 23, and in Japan on July 21 after ABBA played eleven successful concerts earlier in March.

In 1978, the couple Buddy and Mary McCluskey (working for CBS Records at the time), met Stig Anderson, ABBA's manager by chance at a convention in Miami, Florida. According to the McCluskeys, after ABBA performed "Chiquitita" at the Music for UNICEF Concert in January 1979, Buddy McCluskey called Anderson to encourage him to allow ABBA to record the song in Spanish. Anderson agreed and the McCluskeys wrote the Spanish lyrics in Pinamar, Argentina. The success of the Spanish versions of "Chiquitita" and "Estoy Soñando" in Latin America led to the decision to record further ABBA songs in Spanish to create a full length Spanish language album. According to the McCluskeys, they selected the songs to be translated into Spanish and completed the translations during the latter half of 1979. The McCluskeys also provided phonetic lyric sheets. production responsibilities were left to the group's sound engineer Michael B. Tretow, who recorded the new Spanish vocal overdubs onto existing backing tracks at his home studio (named "Mike's Studio" in the album liner notes). Meanwhile, some of Tretow's new Spanish mixes were significantly different from their English counterparts, reflecting his own personal preferences regarding the handling of drum sounds as well as the significant time gap between the two versions, with some tracks being revisited up to six years after their original completion. According to ABBA historian Carl Magnus Palm, the recording of "Dancing Queen" (as "Reina danzante") is the most different sounding to the original version due to new piano overdubbing probably recorded by Andersson on return from Barbados at Polar Music Studio in Stockholm. The songs included on the 2014 deluxe edition release were recorded in October 1980 ("Andante, Andante", "Felicidad"), for inclusion on the Spanish and Latin American versions of Super Trouper and in November 1981 ("No hay a quien culpar", "Se me está escapando"), for inclusion on the Spanish and Latin American versions of The Visitors. The Spanish version of the song "Ring Ring" had been recorded in July 1973, with Spanish lyrics by Doris Band; this recording was however first released in 1994 for the compilation album ABBA Más Oro: Más ABBA Exitos.

Gracias Por La Música saw numerous CD issues in the 1980s including releases in Japan in 1986 (on Polydor), Spain in 1989 (on RCA), and a rare CBS Records issue of an unknown date. The album was deleted in most territories after the compilation CD ABBA Oro: Grandes Exitos, which contained the ten tracks of Gracias Por La Música, was released in 1992, rendering this album obsolete. However, the original version of the album continued to be available in Japan and Argentina until the late 1990s. Gracias Por La Música was certified Platinum in Spain, and stayed on the Spanish Album charts for twenty one weeks. A two disc CD/DVD deluxe edition release of the album was released worldwide on 10 November 2014. The Yorkshire Evening Post described the performances on the deluxe version of the album as "uniformly immaculate". Classic Pop magazine described the album as "less of a throwaway and more of a collectable remix album."