Entertainment

ABBA announce much anticipated comeback and first new music in nearly 40 years


ABBA fans all over the world were saying ‘thank you for the music’ today as the group announced a sensational comeback with their first new music in 39 years.

The group, who initially swore they would never get back together despite selling more than 400 million albums, have revealed the plans today which also includes a “digital” series of dates.

According to The Mirror, a purpose built arena on London’s Olympic Park will be the venue for a four-year-long residency.

The band will perform as holograms in the most advanced technology ever to be used in the live music sector.

The group – comprising Agnetha Fältskog, 71, Björn Ulvaeus, 76, Benny Andersson, 74, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 75 – all wore motion-capture suits to capture their performance.

They teamed up with Star Wars George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, a motion-effects company, to capture their movements and stage presence.

The album – called Voyage – is to be released on November 5, with two new tracks I Still Have Faith in You and Don’t Shut Me Down released as singles.

It is the first new music from the band for decades, who split in 1982 and whose songs include Dancing Queen, The Winner Takes It All and Take a Chance on Me.



ABBA (Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson) circa 1979
ABBA (Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson) circa 1979

Their final recording sessions, also in 1982, produced the hits Under Attack and The Day Before You Came, which featured on the compilation album The Singles.

Their last public performance came three years later, on the Swedish version of TV show This Is Your Life, which honoured their manager Stig Anderson.

The band have assembled some of the biggest names in music to work on the stage show, which is expected to see millions watch it over the next four years.

They include producer Svana Gisla, who has worked with David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen and choreographer Wayne McGregor, who has been Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet.

The reunion has been on the cards for a number of years with them inundated with offers to reform in the past. The most lucrative was £600 million to play a 100-date world tour in 2000, which they turned down.

Talking about reunion offers in the past – including the £600million offer – Björn, said: “That amount was the budget of a small country so we had to give it some thought.



ABBA are expected to perform live as holograms
ABBA are expected to perform live as holograms

“In the end we decided that, whatever offer was on the table, it would be stupid to get back together and utterly ludicrous to change the images people all over the world have of us.”

Benny has previously said: “We would need a good reason to reform and I just don’t see one. We could never recreate the old days. I’d rather be remembered for the way we were 30 years ago.”

The group performed together for the first time in decades in 2016 at a private event, which marked the 50th anniversary of the first meeting between songwriters Bjorn and Benny.

And it appeared that event was the catalyst for talk of a fully-fledged reunion including new music.

The Swedish quartet announced in 2018 they were planning to record new tracks and it was confirmed last year that they have more songs than originally planned.

However the plans were delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic

Bjorn has previously said the idea for the holograms had been suggested to the band by Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller. He said: “He came to Stockholm and he presented this idea to us that we could make identical digital copies of ourselves of a certain age and that those copies could then go on tour and they could sing our songs, you know, and lip sync. I’ve seen this project half-way through and it’s already mind-boggling.”



ABBA have not performed together for decades
ABBA have not performed together for decades

Formed in 1972, Abba were essentially a Swedish supergroup, consisting of songwriters Bjorn and Benny from The Hep Stars and singers Agnetha and Anni-Frid, who had scored success as solo artists.

But after winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo in 1974, they suddenly caught the world’s imagination.

The band scored hit after hit , and toured around the world. What made ABBA so irresistible to fans was that the group was made up of two married couples – Agnetha and Bjorn, as well as Anni-Frid and her husband Benny.

But it was also their downfall as both marriages broke down, leaving long-lasting scars.

Agnetha and Björn, who had two children, divorced first in 1979, followed by Benny and Anni-Frid in 1981. The band disbanded the following year.

Agnetha in particular reportedly struggled with life in ABBA, not least spending so much time away from her two young children, Linda and Peter, while the band flew around the world on their gruelling tour schedule.

After her marriage ended,she was said to have needed counselling. Bjorn, meanwhile, was said to have quickly moved on with a new girlfriend, current wife, Lena Källersjö

Their divorce and break-up inspired some of their most soul-searching lyrics, as they continued to record music.

Happy New Year, from 1980’s Super Trouper album, was set at the end of a party where the “dreams we had before are all dead/ like confetti on the floor”. On The Winner Takes It All, Björn wrote the lines, “But tell me does she kiss/Like I used to kiss you?/Does it feel the same/When she calls your name?”

In a rare interview in 2011, Agnetha claimed she “overdosed” on fame when the band were in their heyday and spoke of how miserable she was. She said: “I am uninterested in appearing in newspapers and on television. Many people think that I am striking a pose – that I want to create a sense of shyness. But it’s just not something I want to do. I overdosed. When I was 15 I became a fulltime singer in a band. At 18 I made my first record. When I was 25, Abba was formed”

When the band finally called it a day, she moved to a cottage in the forest in her home country of Sweden. By her own admission she became a recluse with no friends, and turned her back on music, revealing how she “didn’t sing a note for 13 years” and didn’t even have a stereo in the house.



ABBA in 1974 in Stockholm
ABBA in 1974 in Stockholm

“For a 10-year period I have neither played nor sung nor listened to music. Silence has been a horrible necessity,” she said.

Talking about her Abba career, she says: “It was horrible sometimes. It was fever, it was hysteria, it was sweaty, obsessed crowds.

“I felt like they would take hold of me and I would never be able to get away.”

Agnetha did marry for a second time, to doctor Tomas Sonnenfield, but it lasted just three years. She later dated a truck driver Gert van der Graaf, who then started stalking her after she dumped him. “His courting of me was very intense. . . in the end I couldn’t resist him,” she said, before later branding him “mentally unstable” and taking him to court.



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Meanwhile, Björn and Lena moved to Henley-on-Thames, while Benny also remarried and had two children, while also releasing two albums of instrumental folk music.

The duo would later go onto write Stage show Mamma Mia! In 1999, based on the group’s songs which became a huge worldwide hit and has seen by more than 50million people.

Nine years later the film version premiered starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Julie Walters. The pair also penned songs for UK group Steps.

Anni-Frid similarly kept singing, chalking up an impressive solo career.

She married German Prince Ruzzo Reuss von Plauen in 1992, who died aged just 49, in 1999. They had lived in his castle in Switzerland.

Tragedy hit also when her daughter Ann Lise-Lotte Casper – from her first marriage to childhood love Ragnar Fredriksson – was killed in a traffic accident in the US aged 30, in 1998. She currently lives in London.

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