Almost 40 years after the break-up, the Swedish pop group ABBA has reunited and is releasing a new album. The musicians announced this on Thursday in an online broadcast, according to which they are preparing a digital concert in London next year. “We recorded a new album,” said Björn Ulvaeus, 76, and Benny Andersson, 74, the male half of the legendary quartet.
According to the AP, the album Voyage will be released on November 5, followed by a series of concerts in May next year, but the band members will only perform virtually as holograms, or more precisely digital images of “abbatara”.
In order for the pop quartet to perform in this way, its members had to sing each song in front of 160 cameras for five weeks, which captured every movement. The band collaborated with Industrial Light & Magic directed by George Lucas. “The only big problem was that we had to shave our beards,” Ulvaeus said in London.
According to the AP agency, the virtual version of the series of concerts will start on May 27 in London. The band has not yet officially announced when the individual concerts will take place. Tickets are set to go on sale next Tuesday.
“We did one song first, then more. Then we thought,” Why don’t we do the whole album? ” Ulvaeus said today. The quartet, which has celebrated worldwide success with hits such as Waterloo, Dancing Queen and Mamma Mia, previously announced a “historic livestream” on Twitter, which has sparked much speculation. Today, press conferences on the topic were held in Stockholm, Berlin, London, New York, Sydney and Tokyo.
“We took a break in the spring of 1982 and now we have decided it is time to end it,” ABBA said in a statement. “It is said that waiting more than 40 years between records is reckless, so we recorded a sequel to The Visitors,” the group added.
The Visitors album from 1981 was the last of the Swedish quartet’s repertoire. The group was founded in the early 1970s by Ulvaeus and Andersson with their then partners Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frida Lyngstad. Over the next decade, it became a phenomenon that regularly scored in the music charts of many countries.
ABBA, which in its time earned more than the Swedish concern Volvo, has sold over 380 million albums and singles worldwide, making the band one of the best-selling artists in history. The band has released eight serial albums, which build on catchy melodies and dance rhythms. Her biggest hits include Dancing Queen, Mamma Mia !, Knowing Me, Knowing You, The Winner Takes It All, SOS, Take A Chance on Me, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme !, Voulez-vous or Thank You For The Music.
The cult is still alive
The cult of the ABBA group is still alive, thanks to a number of different, more or less successful projects. Bands Erasure and A-Teens contributed to the renaissance of the ABBA phenomenon, releasing cover versions of well-known hits. The melody was used by the films Muriel Marries or Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. They also played the song Dancing Queen on tour and U2, Madonna also used an excerpt of one song on the record.
In 1999, the theatrical musical Mamma Mia! Premiered in London and became a spectator hit. At its Swedish premiere in 2005, ABBA even met in public after two decades in complete composition. Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streepová starred in the equally successful film adaptation of the musical from 2008. However, the sequel from 2018 was no longer so successful.
Not even a billion dollars
ABBA, which has been part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 2010, has repeatedly turned down offers to perform together in the past, and in the 1990s, even a billion dollars were in play for the band’s return.
The band last performed in 1986. On a private occasion, its members met in 1999, but only in private. Already in 2018, ABBA recorded two new songs for the first time since the 1980s, but at that time she still refused to perform live again on the concert stage.
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