The Swedish quartet together again with «Abba Voyage». The album arriving on November 5th, is anticipated by two unreleased songs already available
The journey starts again and becomes virtual: the Abba are back, after almost 40 years of hiatus, announcing a new album and a futuristic digital show. All this, as anticipated in a live stream on YouTube followed by over 200 thousand people, is called “Abba Voyage” and it concretizes what, at least in part, had been rumored for some time, but had not yet seen the light. On the one hand, there are the new songs: two are already available, “I Still Have Faith In You” and “Don’t Shut Me Down”, titles that had already chased each other since in 2018 the legendary line-up announced that it was back in the studio. But an entire album, «Voyage», will arrive on November 5th, recorded in Stockholm by the Swedish quartet reunited and amused, they said, “to indulge themselves in the studio”. Speaking, during the live web broadcast, is the male half, while the two singers prefer not to be present, showing themselves only in some backstage images: «We realized that being where we are now is incredible. Still friends, loyal to each other, after 40 years. Who did this happen to? To nobody”. From this thought, they say, «I Still Have Faith In You» was born.
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But next to the new music, then, there is one s
pettacolo which will come to life in London in a special Abba Arena with three thousand seats on May 27, 2022: Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad and materialize on the palco as holograms, alongside a 10-piece live band: «With the help of ourselves as young people, we will travel into the future. It’s something that has never been done before, ”the band said in a press release. Their digital versions, a prodigy of technology signed by Industrial Light & Magic of George Lucas, were created thanks to months of motion capture footage and, they guarantee, they will give life to the “strangest and most spectacular concert that is ever possible to imagine”. Three-dimensional amazements aside, however, to see them all together in their seventies in flesh and blood on stage, as far as we understand, they are not talked about (and therefore it is difficult even to imagine them as guests in Sanremo or at the next Eurovision as has sometimes been longed for).
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The public will find them in “Abbatar” format, in a show that will rekindle their legend with 400 million records sold and 17 number one hits. A journey from a long gestation (the first announcement of the digital show was given in 2016) that takes you back in time, to those kitsch and pop 70s that Abba embody perhaps more than any other musical formation. Born in 1972, in business for a decade, the four Swedes at the time they were also two couples in life: Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, musicians and composers, had been collaborating since the mid-60s. Then Ulvaeus met Agnetha Fältskog, blonde, beautiful, already promising pop star in Sweden, and Andersson became engaged to Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who started very young from jazz.
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The Abba palindrome combined their four initials and contained a fairy tale, capable of transforming the quartet into a world phenomenon, still today the most famous Scandinavian group ever. To consecrate them to the international public was theEurovision del 1974 which took place in England: the Abba won with “Waterloo” (in front, among other things, of our Gigliola Cinquetti) and exploded everywhere with that cascade of super catchy, danceable, easy notes – cloying for detractors and snobs – so recognizable as to become the “Abba style”. «Mamma Mia», «Dancing Queen», «Money Money Money», «Fernando» are just some of the well-known titles of a string of successes, including dance, europop and ballads, which contributed to making them a legend along with their sparkling looks : rafts, flared trousers, tight rompers in a best of fashion of the 70s.
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Ten years and eight records later, conquered the rankings of half the world, the spell was broken: both couples reached the end of the line, the four tried, despite the divorces, to carry on the music, but in the end in 1982 the paths split: “The Winner Takes it All”, one of their most melancholy songs, sings precisely the lay down your arms before the end of a love. The icons, however, remained, between the museum dedicated to them in Stockholm and the global success of musical “Mamma Mia!”, built on their songs: since 1999, when it debuted in London, it continues to fill theaters and then in 2008 also gave life to the film (with sequel) headed by Maryl Streep. So even the youngest, who can now follow Abba even in an official TikTok account, know their songs by heart and can embark on this new journey.
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September 2, 2021 (change September 2, 2021 | 20:18)
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