Ratty Reacts to ABBA - The Visitors (so much variation in their music!)
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- Опубліковано 11 жов 2024
- This time I am reacting to yet another ABBA song! This one follows their others by showing ABBA's creativity and versatility in their music.
Check out the song here: • The Visitors
My other ABBA reactions: • ABBA Reactions
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Here have a taste of the instrumental filtered.
ua-cam.com/video/Z5ClxwLV_LU/v-deo.html
The Visitors is a work of genius. The production defies belief and the song is so different to everything else. I would have loved to see the making process of this song.
This is a 1981 recording but still sounds so fresh and haunting as well as quite relevant today.
Very true, but many recordings started to get this sound around 1978-79.
Especially so in so called jazz-fusion (jazz-ethnic-art music with rock sounds), and also new age/new wave pop and rock groups. That was the development even in Sweden.
The synth sounds of the late 70s and early 80s have this haunting sound to it. To me, it's the huge sound scape almost like a big void, that is threatening to suck you in but you can't help but being completely fascinated by it. Then listening to it on vinyl and the record having some kind of irregularity on it that warps the sound a tiny bit just makes the effect that much stronger. A song that reminds me of the same is the opening of Jean-Michel Jarre's Équinoxe 4. Same huge sound scape with strings or pads setting the mood.
@@weepingscorpion8739Hmm,i get what you mean.And i love JMJ and Equinoxe btw.
I ended up loving 'The Visitors' track more later decades than the time released back in '81.I even enjoy listening to the instrumental of it that i found in utube sometime ago.I just get lost in it.
Frida wanted to sound like a sitar in this song and she achieved that.
This is the opening song of the Abba Voyage concert in London. It literally gives me goosebumps each time i see the show snd I've been 9 times!!! Seeing the Abbatars rise up from the stage during the intro is spine tingling. When Frida starts singing, in full spotlight, it is an overwhelming experience. Pure theatrical genius and absolute joy ❤
I really have to go still! It's my favourite song and someone else told me it's the opener. A dream come true!
I agree, that opening was soooooo amazing.!!! Love Abba Voyage!!!
A masterpiece, futuristic, experimental and gloomy - and so far ahead of its time.
Not so much ahead of time, I think, but very good.
A masterpiece indeed
The song is about a Soviet political dissident that used to talk and talk in quiet voices with her friends during their secret meetings. Now the friends do not dare to visit anymore because the secret police found out about them, and they came to arrest her. The voices she hears are of the agents outside the door.
Guess I was a bit off the mark on what I thought it meant.. Thanks for providing some background info!
@@RattyReactsthing is, Bjorn said at the time of release it was a philosophical song and it was up to the listener to decide what the song was about. It was only 11 years after release That he revealed what the song was actually about.
Around the time this song was written, there had been heightened military tensions between Sweden and the USSR due to Russian submarines probing Sweden's territorial waters. The tensions culminated in October 1981 when a nuclear-armed Russian "Whiskey"-class submarine ran aground on rocks near a Swedish naval base, called the "Whiskey on the rocks" episode.
@@glenonoko4918 I didn’t know any of this. I know ABBA got banned in Russia after release of The Visitors, as of the song’s content and Abba appearing on Let Poland Be Poland tv show.
@@bobtrouper Yes,that's it.
'...These walls have witnessed all the anguish of humiliation,and seen the hope of freedom glow in shining faces"....
my fave lyrics from there and one of my favest.It's Bjorn's rather cryptic message here , that many of us little did we know at the time what was excactly all about.This song is the masterpiece that opens impressively the VOYAGE mindblowing show in London that has already sold 1 million tickets since last May attracting people from all over the world to get there, some of them attending there for more than once!!
I am so glad they use this to open the Voyage show. It's so well done as they rise from out of the stage, sihouetted in the lights. It's a goosebump moment.
@@chrisp2071 yes many-especially older lifelong fans - have described these first moments as a thrilling shock hiiting straight through your mind,transporting you back in time,making you believe they are still here alive and kicking.I'm close to go if everything coincides fine,though i'm not that sure i'll be able to keep my eyes dry.Abba was my childhood's fairytale.
@@christianoazzuro6711 Exactly - its a thrilling song to start the show. I hope you get here. It will exceed your expectations. It's exciting, spectacular, fun and emotional.
When we first heard The Visitors in the club, we freaked out. It wasn't like anything we had heard before. Ominess and seductive. One of my all-time favorite songs.
Frida's performance to this song is noticeable.She uses/'stretches' her voice in a way to express better the 'anguish' and the pressure ,some could feel while living into that kind of situation.
The Visitors are the KGB.
Indeed. It's about dissidents...
I love what the Guardian wrote many years after it came out: "it's like ABBA does Joy Division". Ha!
My all time favourite ABBA song.
ABBA has so much more depth than most realize. their image does not match that. most think nice music to dance to, kind of disco pop group. until they actually LISTEN to their vast catalog. its endlessly versatile and interesting. even after hearing it very very often
But don't kid yourself. We used to have to be on the dance floor when this song played.
ABBA is simply amazing. This album is perfect.
Greetings from Rio de Janeiro.
Even today, this song sounds futuristic to me...😮
Benny and Frida❤, already separated, but very united in this great track👌
❤️🇨🇱👍
That's Frida ❤
I would also recommend The Day Before You Came from 1982 .. it has a mature melancholy and is a beautiful song
ABBA's ultimate masterpiece and a blueprint for anything modern. Amazing and mindblowing even 40 years later.
You can't imagine what it was like hearing this for the first time when it came out - just blew my mind. And it was released in winter, too, so that christmas was special. And about ten years later - who knew - it was a club track everyone in the UK was dancing to!?
Love The Visitors, so eerily atmospheric with cool chorus and great dance club floor filler in the day !
Thank you for the reaction. They have so many absolutely fantastic songs, all so different from each other but always the recognizable Abba sound. Frida`s lead vocals really shine here.
Please react to Lay all your love on me and Eagle (the long album version).
Thank you for watching! Both songs are on my list :)
bought this on vinyl when it came out. Good album all around..
Eagle would be a good move next as it is almost "prog" but with that ABBA sensibility. Just play the full version to get the whole feel, great guitars and stellar vocals. :)
EAGLE yes .Majestic.But the original unedited version of 5 plus minutes not the unfairly 'problematic' edited one since it cuts down the quite significant instrumental prog-semi phsychedelic part of the song.
Eagle is probably my second favourite ABBA song after The Visitors. And yes, it has to be the album version.
Amazing song and music of 🅰️🅱️🅱️🅰️ and Frida’s voice is supreme!!!
Awesome reaction video! Beautiful song! I love that!👍💅
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
Glad you liked it definitely one of ABBAs masterpieces
I've known ABBA since day one,they are genius songwriters, and were the first group to use digital recording.
The Yamaha GX-1 Probably used by Benny on this song. That costed around 60K back in 1975. He still has it and it's been restored; he has it in his own studio in Stockholm.
That's super interesting, thanks for the fun fact! :)
Yes he used it here also,but for 60000 you don’t get one it was too rare and Benny was paying 100 000 minimum 1979
The ending chorus of this song is like what we today know as a sequencer . Unique set up far ahead of its time .
A 5:46 song with NO chorus but the title of the song.
It's a masterpiece ✨️ ❤️
There are drums, bass and guitars on this track, but most of the stuff you hear are synthesizers played by Benny. All live in the studio, without click track. The tempo fluctuates, which is why the song lives and breathes like contemporary pop doesn’t.
I find it mind-blowingly impressive that they managed to make an 80s album that sounded this relevant to the time period, and still holds up 40+ years later. Remember, they were primarily a 70s band, heavily associated with the 70s, and their background was in different bands and solo careers on the Swedish 60s pop scene. They were no kids by 1981. Too bad they ran out of gas shortly thereafter, because they were still absolute masters at their craft - sharper than ever.
I still get goosebumps from this song too and heard it back when it was released. BTW, I think this was the 1st CD ever released and it was a FULL DIGITAL recording. Edited to add this from CNN: 'The compact disc was actually invented several years earlier. The first test CD was Richard Strauss’s “Eine Alpensinfonie,” and the first CD actually pressed at a factory was ABBA’s “The Visitors,”' ...Billy Joel was first released in the USA on CD, I believe.
I thought that Billie Joel was first released only in Japan,so Abba was first elsewhere,but i'm not 100 percent sure either.
@@alexioverdo5225 ABBA was the first CD that was digital the entire way from recording to released disc.
@@TWFydGlu thanx!🙂
@@TWFydGlu And btw i do remember reading at the time that a couple of songs had been recorded analogue and M.B Tretow had re-do them in digital so to match the quality of the others that followed.I also recall the album vynil had a yellow sticker indicating 'Digitally recorded'.
Thank you for continuing to react to my favorite band of all time - ABBA. It's very much appreciated. Watching your reaction to The Visitors is what I imagined my reaction was as a 12 year old in 1981 when I heard this song for the first time. Priceless. Keep doing what you're doing, Ratty.
Thank you for continuing to watch/support! I'm glad you enjoy the reactions :)
Stunning🙏
Apparently, Frida taught herself to sing like that, and from what I understand, her voice is actually not treated in any way.
My all time favourite ABBA song
Well, I'm so glad to see you again together with more reactions to ABBA songs
"The visitors" (1981) gives me
complex and different sensations
ABBA was in a delicate personal stage, since they began recording the album right after Benny and Frida's separation. Björn and Benny were with their new partners, and as composers they entered the stage of experimenting, and with the project of writing a musical
That is why I think that the title of the song and the album is not accidental, since in addition to being about the dissidents in the former USSR, I think that they speak of themselves as "visitors" of what "was" ABBA originally (in as for them as couples) Even the cover is very graphic: the Four separated and isolated (image that will be deepened in the official video of the future single "The day before you came" in 1982)
the song itself is very good in its genre, it has a futuristic air (it could go as a soundtrack in a "Star Wars" movie) Frida does a great job in lead voice, the chorus is good but different from ABBA's more traditional, the use of synthesizers by Benny is majestic, and Björn's lyrics are strong
I really like the song itself (8pts), but on the album "The Visitors" I prefer other tracks, the one I like most is the moving "Slipping through my fingers", which was performed live on the TV special 'Dick Cavett meets ABBA'
(in case you want to see another side of ABBA)
I think that "The Visitors" was a single in a few countries like U S. and is the opening track ot the homonymous album
It hasn't a video or TV perfomance, but now in the Voyage Concerts that begin last May 26 in London is the fantastic opening concert
For a next reaction, my suggestion is to
"Eagle" (full version of almost six minutes)
I think that you will enjoy these
I leave you a cordial greeting from my land
Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America
The originality and creativity was unapprciated and very ahead of its time, from what I remember when it came out first. The melody line of the verses is rather difficult and a lot of respect is due Frida for managing to sing it so well.
Their best album - and this is the best track. Volume UP, please. 🙂
One of their more complex compositions and productions. I still remember the shivers down my spine when i dropped the needle on the turntable and was transfixed by it back in '81. Still timeless, and timely unfortunately...This btw was the first album issued as a CD. Great analytical reaction!
Thank you! I appreciate you watching! :)
This song was never given the credit or airtime due when it came out here in the US. Although, it was a major hit later in the 80's for as much as 8 years in the nightclub scene! Patrons would come running to the dj booth asking who did this song and the dance floors where guaranteed to be packed every time it played! I personally believe that kept the song relatively fresh and it could be released again like they did with Kate Bush's "Running up that hill" or even modernized slightly and it would be a monster hit! I would Love t see that happen.
9:12.'I have been waiting for these Visitorrrrrrz" !
As far as instrumentation goes, Benny was increasingly replacing traditional musical sounds with samples from his whizz bang keyboard{s}.
What sounds like a xylophone was likely produced on his keyboard.
I wish they'd done more songs like this. Frida's solo hit "Something's Going On" takes the new-wave Abba sound a step further. And then Bjorn and Benny wrote "One Night in Bangkok", which I wish the girls had sung on.
Loves your ABBA reactions....ABBA FOREVER❤❤❤
Thank you!
I cried when you stopped it at that point of the build up.🥹 This song needed to be heard in its entirety to take you on that full Dream inner space journey. Love ABBA ✨♥️🌹🌹🌹🌹
@@NowVs1980s yeah I wish I could let songs play all the way through but I have a warning on my channel from when I tried it :(
@@RattyReacts Fair call man. I understand. I've seen others do it in parts of songs. 👍🏾 Forgot about that. I'd like to mention that I did enjoy your reactions out of all the other 'Visitors' reactions & reviews I've seen so far. Peace out Brother.✨
@@NowVs1980s I appreciate it! I'm glad you still enjoyed it :)
Love your videos Ratty! another concept around the meaning is that it was Death coming to visit. Have you reacted to The Day Before You Came? Another Abba masterpiece!
That xylophone sound you hear is, I think, supposed to sound like a police car siren--European style.
This is the only album cover where the members of the group are not pictured next to each other...foreshadowing the coming "break" of 40 years
It’s about living in the USSR, where Police gets you, when you had the wrong opinion. Important message until today.
Great song!
Benny and bjorn loved to experiment with different instruments.
@RattyReacts - I remember when the song was released, it was an engineering marvel. Every chime, bell, highhat, bass beat plays a leading role in one way or another. And "Those Chills" you got, we all got them in the day. When you feel it, it's always a masterpiece. Great Review!!
Thank you! I appreciate the further insight as well! :)
I like this song in trillions of ways, and it is very sci-fi in trillions of ways and it reminds me of aliens from other worlds invading earth.
Amazing quality of production ...💯💯💯💯💯💯💯
6:22 Could well be a xylophone. Percussionist Åke Sundquist played that on several Abba tunes, live and in studio.
I so wish you would pay attention to the lyrics - this is extremely serious - life and death in a totalitarian society!
Great reaction friend..as always...If you like the more experimental side of ABBA recommend you react to songs like "Im the city" and "the piper"...the first one is modern and catchy tune as "The visitors"..the second one is a retro an magical song based on middle age's melodies...
Thank you! I appreciate the suggestions! :)
Such an underrated song
You said exactly: the alien! The alienation of the state from the people. That is exactly what abba wants to indicate! It is so powerful for these days, very matching!
Probably my favourite Abba song
Trying to work out the influences on this style. Ultravox? Visage? Peter Gabriel? Other suggestions?
My fave ABBA song!
ABBA is very versatile about their music. Try reacting to the King Kong Song off their second album, Hole In Your Soul off The Album album.
So good,super 😊
This is ABBA meets the Cold War. Great reaction to a very political interpretation of Bjorn and Benny's views at the time along with half the world. Such an amazing song.
Thank you!
I hope that now that you are moving a little deeper to the Abba 'corridor' you might have realised why this band is still big deal after 50 whole years since they had formed and after the success their last album had (no1 in 18 countries) with a 40 whole years gap from discography.Abba left the scene at the time it was still the vynil age /right before the Cd explosion,and came back gloriously in the streaming era with a trendblind organing hit album.
So perfectly said! It’s what I love about being an ABBA fan. There are not mediocre, “meh” type of ABBA fans. Those of us, and WOW there are a lot of us, who love ABBA, we are committed and are continually excited each and every time we hear them.
@@jerrycote659 thank you Jerry.
I definitely have a better understanding now more than ever before :)
Visitor was the first Pop CD ever , released ,again pioneers
Did you notice at the end, she changes the "Cracking up" to "Breaking up"? This was their last album....
Evidently about the Cold War.. A theatrical masterpiece, on stage this would be incredible ❤
Never heard this one before, love it !!!
This song has such a organic feel to it. Perhaps it’s a bit more acoustic and less synthesized but that alone really doesn’t encompass what is going on…..I can’t point to any one thing but the song simply exudes CHARM. Their music….no….wait a second…..it goes beyond just the music. Their presence….the experience they provided always bristled with novelty and charm. It’s bewitching, to be truthful. In the most sincere way possible, it’s utterly bewitching. One may accuse them of calculation and deliberation…..and they WERE always very deliberate, but I believe they were also sincere and…..looking for the right word here….. CANDID. Sometimes silly, sometimes campy, sometimes unconventional. But always themselves.
The Visitors was the last album completed by ABBA before the group disbanded and the various members had already begun separate projects so there was no music videos for the songs.
I always thought of aliens from another world, even if that's not what it was about.
If I had to come up with a genre to call this, it would be "epic pop"
the very stylised vocals add to the atmosphere of dread
ABBA music has an interesting evolution from their early days of folksy songs with Bjorn often singing lead, to the pop/disco sound that they are probably most noted for, and finally these later tracks which seem to have more of a dark and foreboding feel. I would love it if you would more ABBA reactions to include some of their earlier works which sound quite different.
It helps if you actually listen to the lyrics... This was made at the height of the Cold War. It's about living in a totalitarian state, as a secret dissident and getting that dreaded, late night, knock on the door.
It's not that I wasn't listening to the lyrics. I just got a different idea/meaning out of it then what it actually was. Thanks for filling me in on the meaning! :)
Not imagining. This song was recorded during the Cold War. This was about people from Eastern Europe trying to gain their freedom from USSR (Russia)..... It eventually came. But so many had these particular "Visitors" pay them a visit before that freedom came. Secret Police...... KGB....... Terrorized any who opposed them...... Not much has changed...... Except those getting that knock on the door...... A week does not go by, that someone in the "elite" of Russia, accidentally falls out a window...... ha ha. It is much more satisfying to watch these groups eat themselves alive, than going after the "opposition".
Listening to this you can come to realize why only the Beatles have sold more albums...ABBA = genius
And versatility and creativity left the world of dead-music long ago, despite what the deluge of androids lie about it.
ABBA as "unique" sound pioneers of the 80s sound (opening song at today's Voyage shows in London), which above all later gave them the deserved respect among the musicians and did not just reduce them to pop. With Soldiers and Like An Angel Passing ... these three album songs deal with rearmament in the cold war (strategic situation of Sweden with Finland to Russia, still relevant today with the upcoming NATO accession). On the other hand, black clouds also appear privately with the second divorce and the planned band break, which is also expressed on the cover.
Other "unexpected" songs: The Name Of The Game/R'N'B touch/UK no.1 or Eagle (prog rock touch/absolutely the long album.
PS Addendum to Jive by Dancing Queen; In the summer the Bee Gees had their first disco US no.1 "Jive Talkin' " (I'm not a disco fan, but worth listening to, triggered a whole music wave), which inspired ABBA to DQ and their other disco songs.
Funny how we assume certain effects are mechanized or synthetically created. Frida’s voice, for example: Sounds like a vocoder was used but it hadn’t been invented yet. Frida practiced for days ahead, using some hybrid Eartha Kitt accent. Then she gets up to the mic and nails it. The blings and bleeps we hear in the beginning are often referred to as the “Mario coins” sound but this song was recorded long before Mario or Nintendo were on the market. That pulsing, throbbing bass on the chorus is so impressive it’s almost indescribable but then comes the epiphany……The word that comes to mind is “swampy”…..don’t ask me why, but that bass sounds swampy in the best possible way. I can’t help but imagine what ABBA would have sound like If they had remained intact throughout the 80s. There’s no way they could have resisted putting their own little spin on New Wave. It would have been spectacular. Towards the end of your review I can see your wheels turning with the unspoken question “where will they go next?…..is there more of this electronicABBA yet to be discovered?” Well, the closest answer to that is the song “I Am The City”. One of the very last songs recorded it continues with heavy electronic influence and wonderful wordplay. It doesn’t have the solemnity nor storyline of “The Visitors”. Instead it is a gurgling frolic of a song that has the girls trading off phrases and implementing their third voice unison. It has such complexity yet it is accessible and FUN. Check it out!
Me and I has a vocoder at the Album before these
Vocoder may have been the wrong mechanism or terminology….My apologies….but we must be in agreement that there exists a plethora of vocal enhancements today that did not exist at the time of this recording and I would further assume your admiration of the ingenuity and novelty of Frida’s performance
Love this jam
"The Visitors" and especially that song is probably my favorite Abba album. It sounds more 80s with it synths than their usual 70s albums.
I was only 12 when The Visitors album came out but I still think that Two For The Price of One was a wrong choice to be included on the album. Perhaps Bjorn thought it might be a Yellow Submarine or When I'm Sixty Four but even though it's a very good song in its own right, I think it detracts from the completeness and aesthetic of the album. Apart from that, The Visitors is still my favourite ABBA album.
Me and I ,Lay all your Love on me from 1980 Souper trouper sound 80 and Me and I has a Vocoder part
@@Urfinchannel" Lay all your love on me " has a sick bass. Love it
Just the audio, that's OK. It opens your mind!!
Think The Cold War. Think of the visitors being the KGB. Waiting for the knock on the door, taken away, broken, THEN play it again, follow - and you'll get it
They are talking about the iron curtain....sry if you dont know.
Its 1981...
This was their last album together before they went their separate ways broken marriages exhaustion they just didn’t want to perform anymore
The style in my opinion ( at least concerning the verse) is the so called "psychedelic" music. Which occured in the 60s (66-67) by the Beatles, Pink Floyd and other groups. Often they have a "psyche" theme or they are about drug experience and they uses "different" instruments and harmonys especially indish ones. This style I´m pretty shure is very conciously chosen by Abba.Though the style of the verse was old fashioned it fits perfect, also to the contrasting chorus. As always a wonderful song by Abba. And thank you for your reaction!!
This was a deeply political song in disguise,picturing the atmoshere of the cold war era of the times concerning the former Soviet Union and the Western countries.Both this Album and the band got banned abruptly that year in the SU that was a country on which they were previously allowed to be played and a phenomenally popular household name there.
It wasn’t because of this song that the Soviet Union became upset with ABBA as the meaning of the lyrics weren’t revealed by Björn until well into the 90s. It was actually ABBA’s appearance on the TV show ‘let Poland be Poland’ in 1981.
@@discogareth Yes i should have propably been more specific.It wasn't just this song.I know the first reason was Abba's participation in "Let Poland be Poland'.But it was related and coincidented chronically with the album's release.I also remember in the very early '80s the poisonous attack they got from the SU press (and particularly that famous article in Pravda newspaper )accusing the band for corrupting the Juvenille amongst others.Western press made some buzz about that incident.I was in my early teens and have lived real time all the climax of that issue and read like crazy almost everything i could, concerning music and esp Abba.
Song is about her reaction to the KGB coming to arrest her in communist Russia
Cold War fear 😨
Their last album was the best one!!!!
It’s all of it…
Abba was banned in the Sowjetunion because of this song and because of Abba had declared solidarity with the fight in Poland for freedom 1981/82
A xylophone is made of wood, like a marimba. Replace it with metal and you have a vibraphone. (Sorry, couldn't help commenting this) ;)
Thanks for the info! :) I haven't heard of a vibraphone, is it similar to a metallophone?
@@RattyReacts Hehe. Never heard of a metallophone. :) (I could make a cell-phone joke here, but I control myself)
@@RattyReacts The theme-tune from "True romance" is either a xylophone or maybe a marimba.
elektro-glockenspeil
I'm not surprised the vast majority didn't know what it was about, as most people, not being Swedish, just jump to the most basic thing in their tiny minds. They feel that as ABBA only do "happy pop songs about relationships" (?!) this clearly CAN'T have anything to do with reality. No, of course, ABBA wouldn't be POLITICAL, surely not, what do they have to be political about. Most record buyers (except the Nordic countries) couldn't consider the relationship that Scandinavia has had to put up with from a certain other large nation over the decades, and as generally nothing is known to America, or of interest to them outside their own bloody shores, they'd likely be the last to ever know the song's true meaning. In fact, most still won't or ever will. Like it matters. To those of us who matter, the song matters, and there's no reason why ABBA shouldn't come to this kind of thing eventually. In fact, there's no eventually about it, evolution moves forward constantly for that talent that matters. Just think just 5 years before this was boppy 'Dancing Queen'-yet even that song has the girls telling a 17yr old girl to "tease him and turn him on, leave him burning and then you're gone." And look at the album opener, that year, it's called 'When I Kissed The Teacher' for God's sake. Hell they did a stalker song-'Watch Out'-even before Blondie got their own one out. ABBA don't always take things the easy or conventional route, it's just because they wrap their words in such seamless and painstaking melodies, beautiful harmonies, killer leads and pristine production, that the risks are deliberately or patronisingly or ignorantly ignored or just not understood. By this time, ABBA were more tired, angry and sad than anything, and this finally became so obvious in their music, and is all the better for it.
But if you think this is amazing, its meaning is at least known. Check out the following year's 'The Day Before You Came' for the most mysterious ABBA song ever that still freaks people out to this day and has whole essays done on its likely meanings.
supposedly the lyrics inspiired by a friend of a friend who knew some soviet dissidents living 'underground' in the old USSR . . .
The title refers to something far less pleasant than aliens, trust me.
I'm team paranoia in interpreting this one
I'm team "secret police". Most people do not have secret meetings waiting for Aliens. And talking about "freedom".