The album will be released on November 5, the musicians said.
London:
Nearly four decades after disbanding and promising not to get back together, Swedish superstar ABBA on Thursday announced a musical comeback with a new album and show in London with their performances captured by digital avatars.
Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of the group said through a video presentation in London that “we’ve done a new record with ABBA.”
Abba had a number of hits in the 1970s and early 1980s after winning Eurovision in 1974 with “Waterloo”.
Almost as famous for their exaggerated costumes as their music, the group achieved more than 400 million album sales over 50 years, despite parting ways in 1982 and resolutely resisting all offers to return to work together, until now. .
But on Thursday, Universal Music Group made a presentation of a new ABBA song called “I Still Have Faith in You” at the top of London’s ArcelorMittal Orbit tower.
Then Ulvaeus and Andersson appeared in person, both dressed in black.
“The record is already in the can, it’s already there,” said Andersson, who described the group’s return to the studio.
“It’s been 40 years, or 39, it was like no time had passed. It was pretty amazing,” he said.
“We did as well as we could at our age.
“At our age there is a certain depth in the whole subject,” Ulvaeus said. “There’s a lot of experience, a lot of years, that I hope people can hear.”
“It’s the most fun thing you can do: write songs,” he added.
The album will be released on November 5, the musicians said.
The now septuagenarian stars of pop classics such as “Dancing Queen,” “The Winner Takes It All” and “Take a Chance on Me,” last recorded new music in the 1980s.
British radio presenter Zoe Ball, who hosted the interview, said: “This is huge: yes, ABBA is officially back together.”
The presentation came after the group – Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 75, Agnetha Faltskog, 71, Ulvaeus, 76, and Andersson, 74 – announced on Twitter last week: “Thanks for waiting, the journey is about to begin “.
Swedish pop icons had announced they would return to the studio in 2018, saying, “The four of us felt that after about 35 years, it might be fun to join forces again and enter the recording studio.”
They mentioned five new songs, including “I Still Have Faith in You” and “Don’t Shut Me Down,” which were played in London on Thursday.
– “Sensational reappearance” –
The musicians also described the process of transforming into digital avatars using hologram technology for a new show to be launched in London next year.
They described how they were photographed in jerseys to create the avatars of a new show called “ABBA Voyage” which will be performed in a theater being built near the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park presentation venue in East London.
The show will include 22 songs, most of the group’s classic hits, and will last an hour and a half, the musicians said.
The project was delayed by pandemic and technological issues with the avatars, Swedish author Carl Magnus Palm, who has written numerous books about the group, told AFP on Thursday.
The avatars will be more sophisticated than had been seen previously in programs with holograms from singers like Whitney Houston, she said.
“It will look more real and look like 1979,” he said.
The group separated in 1982, when the two married couples in the quartet divorced.
They moved away from a reunion despite the enduring popularity of their music, driven by a successful 1992 compilation album, the musical “Mamma Mia” and subsequent films derived from Meryl Streep, Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan. .
“There is simply no motivation to regroup. Money is not a factor and we would like people to remember us as we were,” Ulvaeus said in a 2008 interview.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, each member of Abba is worth between $ 200 million and $ 300 million. In 2000 they turned down a $ 1 billion offer to tour 100 shows worldwide.
“They’re very rich independently, so I don’t think it’s for the money,” Palm said of his return.
“I think they’re really excited about the possibilities of that.”
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