We Love ABBA: The Mamma Mia Dance Collection is a triple-disc album of rehashed Abbacadabra material released to coincide with the Meryl Streep-starring film Mamma Mia! The Movie (2008). In essence, it's an updated version of the last Abbacadabra album, Mama Mia: It's the Best of Abbacadabra (2001), a double-disc mix released on the heels of the long-running West End musical Mamma Mia!, which made its debut in 1999 and quickly proved internationally successful. Much of the material rehashed on these post-millennial Abbacadabra albums actually dates back to the '90s, when Almighty Records had the clever idea to make a business out of remixing
ABBA in a Euro-dance style for the burgeoning electronic dance music market. Rather than remix the original
ABBA recordings, however, Almighty Records created Abbacadabra, a faceless studio team of producers and vocalists who cut their own cover versions. The first Abbacadabra release, "'Knowing Me Knowing You," came in 1991 and, along with the full-length album Abbasalute, "Dancing Queen" followed in 1992. The Abbacadabra releases continued for years on end, and while the no-name producers and vocalists came and went, the music stayed more or less the same: Euro-dance cover versions of
ABBA's greatest hits.
We Love ABBA: The Mamma Mia Dance Collection includes all the Abbacadabra favorites starting with "Dancing Queen," and though it's a mix album like its predecessor, the songs are extended to nearly full-length this time, each track clocking in somewhere between six and nine minutes. The catch is, the third disc includes material from the first two discs, albeit mixed at a faster clip, allowing for 20 tracks in 80 minutes (in comparison, the first two discs include 12 tracks each). Consequently, there's not as much material here as what meets the eye at first glance, and anyone with an Abbacadabra album or two in their collection might think twice about shelling out for another one. At least there are a few new recordings this time with versions of the
ABBA rarities "Just Like That," "If It Wasn't for the Nights," and "Under Attack." ~ Jason Birchmeier