ABBA are reuniting

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ABBA confirm they have recorded new music for the first time in 35 years calling it an 'extremely joyous experience'

ABBA has recorded new music for the first time in 35 years, according to a statement from the band.

They told Swedish site Afton Bladet: ‘The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence.

'We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did.

They're back! ABBA have confirmed they have reunited and recorded new music for the first time in 35 years calling it an 'extremely joyous experience'

'And it was like time had stood still and that we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyous experience.'

'It resulted in two new songs and one of them, I Still Have Faith In You will be performed by or digital selves in a TV special produced by NBC and the BBC aimed for broadcasting in December.

They added: 'We may have been old, but the song is new. And it feels good.'

Just two days ago, fans were overjoyed to hear ABBA are launching a comeback... but they won't be the ones singing or dancing.

Instead, virtual 'Abbatars' are being created to represent the four members of the Swedish pop group for an upcoming digital gig.

Singer Björn Ulvaeus, 72, revealed the news of the gigs during a speech in Brussels. The two-hour show is expected to be broadcast by the BBC in Britain and simulcast across the globe.

A world tour is planned for 2019 or 2020, which could generate hundreds of millions of pounds in ticket sales, according to the Times.

The band will appear as they looked at their musical peak in 1979 thanks to high-tech imaging equipment.

'We thought we looked good that year,' Ulvaeus said.

Silicon Valley experts are using old videos to replicate how the band danced, dressed and sang so they can be programmed to reproduce hits such as Waterloo, Mamma Mia and Dancing Queen.

Ulvaeus described the effect as 'simply mind-boggling'.

Video playing bottom right...

'You'll hear the voices of ABBA coming out of the mouths of the Abbatars,' he said.

'You won't be able to see that they're not human beings. It'll be spooky, I assure you, but great fun and no one has done it before.'

The band sold more than 400 million albums but have not performed since 1986, apart from at a private party in 2016.

The four members - Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, 71, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 72, and Agnetha Fältskog, 68 - have previously resisted reunions but are all behind the Abbatar project.

If successful the technology could allow bands to stage concerts anywhere in the world without the celebrities being present.

If the technology is embraced by fans it will allow artists to stage concerts anywhere in the world without leaving their homes.

Ulvaeus said US 'techno artists' had scanned the band last year.

'They photographed us from all possible angles, they made us grimace in front of cameras, they painted dots on our faces, they measured our heads,' he told broadcasting executives last week.

'Apparently, a cranium doesn't change with age the way the rest of your body falls apart.'

The singer said there was an 'existential dimension' to the project, as the band explored the idea of being young again: 'The wisdom that we hopefully possess now in combination with the youth of the Abbatars.'

living in the future is wild

First I learn that Fugazi occasionally gets together and jams, and now ABBA. Following a Cubs win, death of Bowie and Prince, a couple of weird Super Bowls, that Oscars best picture debacle, Trump ... yeah we are living in an alternate reality. It's pretty much the right time for Tupac to call off the ruse and go on tour.

it can only be a matter of time before hologram fugazi hit the road

We are all holograms living in a world where Fugazi is still on hiatus. There is another dimension where Fugazi still records and tours, but there are no other people.

Soldiers is so fucking good

otm

First I learn that Fugazi occasionally gets together and jams, and now ABBA

tour 2019

this is pretty sweet news. i recently listened to the greatest hits LP and every song was a glorious pop gem.

i have some friends in Malmo that i have visited a few times. when you first get to the Stockholm airport there was a giant mural of ABBA on one of the walls. for good reason, they are a treasure.

oh god

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAzEY1MfXrQ

its like they took all the worst elements of the worst euroballads of the last couple of albums and made its gruesome prototype

I feel like this whole thing is a bad idea, might have worked better if they had tried it 20 years ago, but I know their lawyers needed ample time to come to an agreement on how this would work, and of course the de-ageing tech wasn't great back then.

Don't Shut Me Down is much better imo

these two songs are amazing

no idea what that means about euroballads xp these are great abba songs

Rutger and Ole turning over in their respective graves.

That was not terrible, but I don't know if I'd listen again.
I don't know about the self-mythologizing video, though, as if we've all spent 40 years doing nothing but waiting for their reunion?

Yes, your take seems about right.

i love Abba, i don't love reunions, i really don't love being beaten over the head with wrong opinions by the normie media

guess i'll check this out when i feel like it

the reunion concert will be an absolute fiasco

What, you don’t like avatars?

Should ILX have avatars?

I didn't realize there was an entire new album, that actually makes me more optimistic (rockism).

Good point.

what a dreadful boring comeback song.

I really hoped they would return with a great pop banger. They should have stayed retired.

Pop banger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWGWFa3jznI

Tracklisting for the Voyage album:

1. I Still Have Faith In You
2. When You Danced With Me
3. Little Things
4. Don’t Shut Me Down
5. Just A Notion
6. I Can Be That Woman
7. Keep An Eye On Dan
8. Bumble Bee
9. No Doubt About It
10. Ode To Freedom

Short demo versions of Just A Notion and Bumble Bee can be found on the Abba Undeleted Medley, released in 1994. Just A Notion is at 4:55, Bumble Bee at 14:41.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUfAzxBKvLA

Just A Notion was first recorded in 1982 for the abandoned follow-up album to The Visitors; both versions of the recording were bootlegged.

Free As A Bumblebee (with a Bjorn vocal) was demoed in 1978 during the Voulez-Vous sessions.

I like both tracks. I didn’t expect to, but I prefer the ballad. The chorus on the poppy one doesn’t soar where I want it to, but the ballad is all soar, all the time. I can’t help it, I’m a cheese ball and I found it moving.

Keep An Eye On Dan surely has to be a Bjorn vocal.

Gawd bless them for not using autotune, the vocals on the ballad are kinda pitchy in places and they could have easily tidied that up, along with the timing.

I can see this working out for them, apparently the Fleetwood Mac reunion tour just before Covid made tons of cash (despite being Lindsey-less), nostalgic boomers money is there for the taking.

I've never had much interest in an ABBA reunion, I think finishing when they did and then never doing anything together after it was a touch of class. Both new songs sound very like ABBA, but sort of as if they've been constructed from bits of their older songs. I like them though.

(xp) The thing about ABBA is, that in the UK at least, they're very much not just a band loved by boomers.

Surely their fanbase when they were originally around was majority gen X.

I learned from an early 80's Look-In annual that I shared my birthday with Bjorn and considered that confirmation that I was cool!

(xp) They were something of a 9 to 90 band. My mum, who was never much into pop or rock music, loved them - in contrast she had no interest in the Beatles whatsoever.

I guess that’s true they held an appeal to a wide age range. Quite enjoying these new ones, maybe the sound is less “fuzzy” and “warm” and more shiny than classic Abba, but it’s a different age.

My parents and my Granny's loved Abba

Where the fuck did this come from????

Both songs are a HELL of a lot better than I was expecting. Thumbs up!!

Sweden, iirc

bet Jeff Lynne's gutted he wasn't asked to produce

abba has always been a self produced all swedish in house crew!

Another softie here who likes both of these songs. "I am not the one you knew/I'm now and then combined/And I'm asking you to have an open mind" <== that is a lovely lyric

"Don't Shut Me Down" is aces. A legitimate ABBA song.

Both new songs are strong, but "Don't Shut Me Down" is really excellent and bodes well for the rest.

I was on the livestream yesterday. As the first video (for "I Still Have Faith In You") started playing, without any prior explanation, my thoughts went from "hmm, don't remember this one", to "oh, those voices sound distinctly older", to "fuck, this is a new track". That's when the shivers started. Then, towards the end: "how have they got late-1970s Frida to lip-synch the lyrics, that's uncanny". We didn't yet know about the avatars.

The most charitable thing I can say about Zoe Ball's interview with Benny & Bjorn is that she was overawed and lost it a bit. B&B handled her excitable wibblings with patience and grace.

Gleaned from the interview: the show is 22 songs, 90 minutes, mostly greatest hits plus the two new songs and a few deeper cuts. 10 live musicians on stage. Visual direction by Baillie Walsh. Inclusion of "Dancing Queen" confirmed (duh). They also talked about "Under Attack" and "The King Has Lost His Crown" as songs that should have been big hits, which could be a hint. On the new self-produced album ("it's all us"), "Little Things" is a Christmas song.

*43 seconds into "don't shut me down"* god i fucking love abba

i even think the gelatinous ballads are dope i'm helpless

Great record

Fun record. Witless Guardian review. First two singles probably the best tracks but the rest is great. I despair of people who can't be moved by good schmaltz.

I’ve been playing it over and over again today. It’s such a strange record, and like a lot of ABBA, a lot of it sounds off-kilter and naff, but that’s something to push through. “Little Things” in particular is… challenging… but then it segues straight into “Don’t Shut Me Down”, which immediately reframes the idyll. And then there are the subsequent songs about marital/post-marital strife, which sit all the better in its wake. B&B’s ventriloquising is unsettling in much the same way as “The Winner Takes It All” was us telling - all that self-denigration - but A&F interpret the sentiments beautifully, and in a way that suggests that they’re fully on board.

(“us settling” = “unsettling”… I may have had a drink or two)

Don’t get the hate for Little Things. Fits in the long tradition of sickly twee Abba songs haunted by a sense of loss.

Yeah, that one works for me. The two I’m still a bit cool on are Bumblebee and Ode To Freedom.

I'm having a lot of fun writing about Voyage, and the reaction to it, for a glossy gay lifestyle magazine. It does help enormously when you're not welded to the hot take.

:)