What Are ABBA’s Rarest Tracks?

Ask ten devoted fans what are ABBA’s rarest tracks, and you will probably get ten slightly different answers. That is part of the fun. With a catalogue as loved, reissued and discussed as ABBA’s, rarity is not always about a song being completely unheard. Sometimes it means a track was released only in one territory, tucked away on a B-side, issued in another language, or known mainly through collectors’ tapes and later archive releases.

For fans, that is where the real treasure hunt begins. Beyond the global giants like Dancing Queen and The Winner Takes It All sits another ABBA world – one built from odd pressings, alternate versions, promotional oddities and songs that somehow stayed in the shadows while the hits lit up the planet.

What are ABBA’s rarest tracks really?

Before naming titles, it helps to pin down what “rare” means in ABBA terms. Unlike some artists, ABBA do not have shelves full of officially released non-album material. Their studio output was tightly managed, and their best-known work has been repackaged many times. So a rare ABBA track usually falls into one of four camps.

It might be a non-English recording such as a Spanish-language version. It might be an early track released before the group fully became ABBA as the world knows them. It might be a B-side that never gained the same spotlight as the single it supported. Or it might be an unreleased or long-unavailable recording that later appeared in archival form.

That distinction matters because some songs are rare to own, while others are rare only in the sense that casual listeners never hear them. A collector in 1984 and a streaming-era fan in 2026 will mean different things when they talk about rarity.

The tracks fans most often count among ABBA’s rarest

Elaine

If there is one title that often makes fans lean in, it is Elaine. Released as the B-side to The Winner Takes It All in 1980, it has all the ingredients of a cult ABBA favourite. It is dramatic, rhythmically urgent and packed with that polished, slightly mysterious production Benny and Björn did so well at the turn of the decade.

It is not “lost” in the strict sense, but it was never destined to be a centre-stage song. That B-side status gave it an aura many fans still love. For listeners who grew up with the big singles on radio, finding Elaine later can feel like opening a door into ABBA’s secret room.

Should I Laugh or Cry

Another B-side jewel, Should I Laugh or Cry appeared on the flip side of One of Us in 1981. This one feels almost too strong to be hidden away. It carries the emotional bite of The Visitors era, with cool synth textures and that unmistakable late-ABBA sense of tension under the melody.

For many fans, its rarity is emotional as much as commercial. It sounds like a major album statement, yet lived for years in that B-side category, making it one of those tracks you discovered only if you went looking.

Put On Your White Sombrero

This song has become legendary among fans because it spent years as one of those whispered-about unreleased tracks. Recorded during the Super Trouper sessions, it did not appear in its proper form at the time and existed more as a title that serious collectors knew than a song the general public could easily hear.

When archival releases finally gave fans wider access, the mystique did not disappear. If anything, it deepened. It is a reminder that ABBA’s vault was not simply filled with scraps. Even songs left off the original albums often had real personality and charm.

Dream World

Dream World is another favourite in any conversation about ABBA rarities. Recorded in 1978 and left off Voulez-Vous, it later emerged as a polished, upbeat piece that immediately prompted the obvious fan question – how did this stay in the vault?

That is often the mark of a great ABBA rarity. It does not feel like a failed experiment. It feels like a song that simply lost out in a catalogue crowded with astonishingly high standards.

Hamlet III Part 1 and Part 2

Now we move into territory that feels genuinely specialist. These instrumentals, connected to ABBA’s work around the song I Wonder and a Swedish TV production, are not the sort of tracks most listeners stumble across by accident.

They matter because they show another side of the group’s musical world – more theatrical, more contextual, less radio-friendly. For fans interested in ABBA as craftspeople rather than only pop hitmakers, these are fascinating pieces of the puzzle.

Hovas Vittne

Hovas Vittne is one of the strangest and most charming entries in the ABBA universe. A spoken-word birthday tribute recorded for Stig Anderson in 1981, it was not a conventional single and was never intended as a major commercial statement.

That alone secures its rarity status. It also captures something fans adore – the sense that behind the immaculate pop machine were playful personalities, private jokes and one-off moments that reveal the human side of the story.

The foreign-language recordings that change the conversation

If you ask what are ABBA’s rarest tracks, the answer has to include the Spanish recordings. Gracias Por La Música, Chiquitita in Spanish, and the Spanish versions of songs such as Happy New Year and Waterloo hold a special place in the catalogue.

They are not all ultra-rare now, but they were once far less familiar to English-speaking fans in Britain. For many listeners, hearing Agnetha and Frida reinterpret these songs in Spanish added a fresh emotional colour rather than simply novelty value. The phrasing shifts, the atmosphere changes, and suddenly a song you know by heart feels newly alive.

That is the interesting trade-off with ABBA rarities. Some are rare because very few people own them. Others are rare because they sit just outside the standard story of the band. The Spanish material belongs firmly in that second category.

Early recordings and the pre-fame edges of the catalogue

A proper ABBA rarity discussion also stretches back before Waterloo. Tracks connected to Festfolk, early Björn and Benny collaborations, and various Swedish-language recordings can feel like proto-ABBA artefacts – not always part of the official core catalogue, but essential if you want the full picture.

For newer fans, this is often where collecting becomes listening in a different way. You are no longer asking only, “Is this a great song?” You are asking, “What does this tell me about how ABBA became ABBA?” Some of these recordings are rougher, lighter or more period-specific than the later classics, but that is exactly why they are so revealing.

Why some rare tracks stay rare in spirit

Even when archive releases bring these songs back into circulation, they often remain rare in spirit. A track like Dream World may be easier to hear today than it was thirty years ago, but it still feels like a discovery because it never had the cultural saturation of the major singles.

That is part of ABBA’s enduring magic. The catalogue does not flatten out once you know the big albums. It keeps opening. One B-side leads to another. A foreign-language version sends you towards a whole parallel release history. A long-whispered unreleased song turns out to be not a curiosity, but a genuine gem.

For fan communities, those discoveries matter because they keep the music active. They give us something to compare, debate and cherish together. One listener might swear by Elaine. Another will defend Should I Laugh or Cry as the finest hidden track ABBA ever cut. Someone else will always choose the oddball delight of Hovas Vittne. None of them are wrong.

So which is the rarest of all?

If we are being strict, the rarest ABBA tracks are usually the ones tied to limited original releases, obscure promotional issues or recordings that remained unavailable for years. But if we are being honest as fans, “rarest” often means the songs that still give you that thrill of discovery.

That is why this question never quite has a final answer. Availability changes. Box sets appear. Archive projects bring hidden material into the light. Yet the feeling stays the same. There is always another corner of the ABBA story waiting to be heard.

If you love the group beyond the obvious hits, keep following the side roads. The rare tracks are not just extras – they are often where ABBA’s world feels most personal, most surprising and, somehow, closest to the fans who never stopped listening.