Arrival

Sessions began on 4 and 5 August 1975 at Glen Studios in a Stockholm suburb, and the first backing tracks included those for Dancing Queen and Fernando. Fernando had been meant for Lyngstad's Swedish solo album Frida ensam. It came out as an ABBA single in March 1976, so it appears on the Australian and New Zealand editions of Arrival between Why Did It Have to Be Me and Tiger. Work picked up again on 23 March 1976 with Knowing Me, Knowing You, which Andersson later called one of their five best recordings. Money, Money, Money, at one stage titled Gypsy Girl, was finished in May, When I Kissed the Teacher was recorded in June, and Tiger and Dum Dum Diddle in July.

Ulvaeus has said he is unhappy with Dum Dum Diddle, whose words he wrote at five in the morning because he had to bring something to the vocal overdub session. My Love, My Life began as a faster song called Monsieur, Monsieur and became a ballad for Fältskog, with backing vocals inspired by 10cc's I'm Not in Love. Why Did It Have to Be Me grew out of an earlier song, Happy Hawaii. The final track was an instrumental first called Ode to Dalecarlia, which was renamed Arrival and became the title track.

The cover shows the group in and out of a Bell 47 helicopter at Barkarby Airport, northwest of Stockholm, and carries the mirrored-B logo that Rune Söderqvist designed. Arrival was the top-selling album of 1977 in both the UK and West Germany and peaked at number 20 on the Billboard 200, where it was certified gold. In the UK it was the first ABBA album to reach number one, in the first week of 1977, and it has sold more than 1.7 million copies there. It was nominated for the first BRIT Award for Best International Album.

Reviews were mixed when it came out. Rolling Stone's Ken Tucker panned it and Robert Christgau gave it a C, while Record Mirror gave it five stars and called it their best yet. Writing in Pitchfork in 2016, Simon Goddard said that none of the album's lyrical protagonists is happy and called Tiger a fabulously unsettling psycho-pop thriller. In 2024 the album was selected for the US National Recording Registry.