Sometime record companies release compilation albums that make sense. Other times they make no sense at all, and that's the case with 18 HITS. I suspect it was intended as a budget release, perhaps for Europe. The disc contains, as it's titled, 18 tracks from Swedish supergroup ABBA, with many of their biggest hits here. The confusing part is when you wonder why some of these tracks were included and others excluded. Things get off to a decent start with the first nine tracks being true, solid hits. I can't fault the inclusion of track 10, "Hasta Mañana", as it's always been one of my favorites, yet it wasn't a huge hit (though it was included on ABBA'S GREATEST HITS). I also don't really object to "Lay All Your Love On Me", but again, it wasn't a huge hit originally. "Thank You For The Music" has always been a puzzler, showing up on many hits compilations, though it was never a hit record. It's become almost a tradition to include this track on an ABBA hits compilation. And then we get to the curious "Happy New Year", another album track that really wasn't a hit. Then things really get strange as the compilation finishes off with the final four tracks presented in their non-English versions. It wouldn't have been so bad, but three of the four songs had already been presented in English in the prior tracks on the album. Again, this is an odd compilation. Buy it if you collect ABBA albums, or if you just want a sampling of their non-English tracks and don't want to delve into their full box sets. This one gets three stars from me. ABBA's material is always great, but this one proves that the songs just can't be thrown together with no purpose. Better choices for single-disc compilations would be either the old GOLD disc, or the new NUMBER ONES disc.
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