lunes, 31 de octubre de 2022

The Q&A with Björn And Benny.

Polar Music & UMPG Proudly Presents The Q&A With Björn And Benny.

Recorded at Atlantis Studios, Stockholm, March 1, 2022
Moderator Jan Gradvall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXXD4MeowIs

sábado, 29 de octubre de 2022

I went to see Abba Voyage and I felt like I was at a concert 100 years in the future rather than 2022

From .birminghammail.co.uk: "I went to see Abba Voyage and I felt like I was at a concert 100 years in the future rather than 2022"

29 OCT 2022

full article here: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/.../went-see-abba-voyage...

I went to Abba Voyage and I felt like I was at a concert 100 years in the future

Rebecca Astill —

Abba Voyage is cloaked in a veil of mystery and anonymity, thanks to the no phone rule present inside. All I knew going in, was the vague concept that CGI makes it seem like you’re at an ABBA concert from their youth.

I didn’t know it took five years and cost £140m to make. Hopefully that gives you an idea of the magnitude of the concert.

There were vibrant light shows which expanded beyond the stage and above the audience, screens displaying short films and the Eurovision performance that started everything, surround sound and, of course, the avatars. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, Abba Voyage is the peak of human imagination.

The show started on a sombre note, as Anna-Frid appeared singing 1981 hit The Visitors. The audience were certainly expecting an exhilarating start and the slower number took a few people by surprise - though it turned out to be the perfect opener, a builder of suspense.

The middle chunk of the gig was dedicated to the classics on every family party playlist - Lay All Your Love On Me, Chiquitita, Fernando, Mamma Mia, Gimme Gimme and Waterloo. During each song I marvelled at the plausibility of the avatars on stage.

Abba Voyage

They were perfect, down to the movement of each strand of hair, to the 70s dance moves and Benny and Bjorn on the instruments. I was worried they’d be kind of Sims-esque, but instead I just couldn’t believe they weren’t real people. My mind was blown.

During interludes where the band ‘changed outfits’, one of the many gags to make the gig seem real, we watched projections of the band singing on the 65m pixel screen. During another interlude, the backing band, handpicked by Abba themselves, give an astounding performance of Does Your Mother Know.

Obviously, the highlight of the show was Dancing Queen. As soon as the keyboard glissando and chorus of ‘aaaaah aah aaaaaah’ started, the whole crowd was in uproar, and the security guards were encouraging everyone to their feet.

The scene was something from a pandemic lockdown daydream. Thousands of people, who had never met before were on their feet dancing, pointing and smiling at each other, and wondering at the hold that one song has over us.

The band came back for an encore of Thank you for the Music and The Winner Takes It All, before bidding farewell. But that wasn’t all, the final encore saw avatars of current day Abba come to stage, thank everyone for coming, and disappear to the sound of absolute euphoria.

There was a notable absence of Super Trouper, but other than that, it was the perfect night. Words don't do it justice, everyone says it but it needs to be seen to be believed.

How to buy Abba Voyage tickets

You can buy official Abba Voyage tickets on Ticketmaster. There is an option to only see tickets below £50, and the most expensive tickets cost more than £200.

Where is Abba Voyage

Abba Voyage takes place in the Abba Arena, a custom built concert venue in Stratford, East London, next to Pudding Mill Lane station. It has a capacity of 3,000, and, here’s the best bit, it can be folded away and shipped somewhere else, for when the show finishes in the UK.

The address is Abba Arena, 1 Pudding Mill Lane, London, E15 2RU.

Where to stay near the Abba Arena

I’d recommend staying at the Hyatt Regency London Stratford, as I did. It’s a short, and most importantly, safe 20 minute walk to and from the stadium, and right in the midst of Stratford’s Westfield shopping centre with plenty of restaurants and coffee shops nearby.

Inside are 225 guestrooms and 10 suites, so you’re always likely to find a room available. There’s a restaurant, bar terrace, gym, room service and breakfast.

If you’re visiting for the Abba Voyage concert, it’s worth getting the bed and breakfast deal on the website. The address is 10A Chestnut Plaza, Stratford City, London, E20 1GL.

jueves, 27 de octubre de 2022

Singapore - Seoul

Singapore, Seoul

Perurban instagram

miércoles, 26 de octubre de 2022

the new @allontheboard at Pudding Mill Lane

source: ABBA Voyage

Voyage One Year

#VoyageOneYear

---------------

Fuente: https://www.facebook.com/ABBA/posts/pfbid0i7kUmLhMmZW1sE13KUXx719w1iwVZoxVqtRzG2pNMHJkrXfuF2W4XYE71q7aifial

domingo, 23 de octubre de 2022

Per Sundin: "New destination - New adventure; Singapore"

News? About?

From Instagram: perurban

"New destination - New adventure; Singapore"

Björn Ulvaeus, Christina Sas, Per Sundin

Christina Sas

Senior Product Manager Universal Music Group & Co-Lead CMA Task Force Germany

viernes, 21 de octubre de 2022

Puzzles with Benny

what's the name of the game

Source: ABBA Voyage

ABBA Wish Fans ‘Happy New Year’ Again With Upcoming Gold Vinyl Single

ABBA Wish Fans ‘Happy New Year’ Again With Upcoming Gold Vinyl Single
The latest collector’s edition pressing of the much-loved song will be released on December 16.

Published on 
October 21, 2022

A gold vinyl, limited edition of ABBA’s perennial “Happy New Year” is now available to pre-order. Only 5,000 copies of the highly desirable 7-inch single are being pressed, on the Polar label via Universal.

The latest collector’s edition pressing of the much-loved song will be released, ahead of celebrations to mark the turn of the year to 2023, on December 16. As well as the lead song on the A-side, it has the Spanish-language version, “Felicidad,” on the B-side and features unique artwork. That recording was on the South American edition of its parent album, Super Trouper, the group’s seventh studio set, and reached No.5 in Argentina in its own right.

“Happy New Year” has been released in a series of equally collectable limited edition singles in recent years, each of them seized upon by ABBA collectors worldwide. Two years ago, it appeared in translucent blue vinyl; in 2019, in a clear vinyl version; and in 2018, in white vinyl. Much earlier, the track was very briefly available as a silver glitter vinyl single in a mere 500 copies, which sold out instantaneously when the release was announced.

The track, with its lead vocals by Agnetha Fältskog, was written in Barbados by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus in January 1980. It became an immediate favorite despite not being released as a single at the time. It finally achieved that status, in some countries, in 1999, when it reached No.4 in Sweden and No.8 in the Netherlands.

A 2008 reissue took the song to No.4 again in Sweden, No.5 in Norway and No.14 in Denmark. A-Teens, the ABBA tribute quartet from Stockholm who rode a wave of popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s, covered “Happy New Year” in 2000. Remarkably, their version also peaked at No.4 in Sweden.

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/abba-happy-new-year-gold-vinyl-single/

lunes, 17 de octubre de 2022

Per Sundin on ABBA

PER SUNDIN ON ABBA, POPHOUSE’S ACQUISITION STRATEGY – AND WHY HE THINKS THE SMARTEST PEOPLE AT RECORD COMPANIES WILL SOON BE WORKING ON CATALOG

OCTOBER 17, 2022BY TIM INGHAM

You can listen to the latest MBW podcast above, or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart etc. via this link.

If you watch the new Netflix dramatization of the Spotify story – ‘The Playlist’ – you’ll come across an entire episode told from the perspective of Per Sundin.

That’s because Sundin was the CEO of Universal Music Sweden at the time of Spotify’s EU launch (2008), and one of the early believers that Daniel Ek‘s streaming platform could one day rule the global music industry.

Yet arguably Sundin’s current professional endeavors are even more worthy of the TV drama treatment.

As he explains on this MBW Podcast, Sundin has since 2019 been CEO of Pophouse Entertainment – the Stockholm-based company behind a number of successful ventures with ABBA.

The most radical of those ventures is ABBA Voyage, the technologically stunning ‘virtual concert residency’ from the legendary Swedish band that has been playing to hundreds of thousands of wowed ticketholders in London since May this year.

Portraying the group as they appeared in 1977, ABBA Voyage has been created by ABBA in conjunction with Pophouse and Industrial Light & Magic, the Disney-owned visual effects company most famous for working on Star Wars properties through the decades. (Founding ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus is a shareholder in, and board member of, Pophouse.)

Pophouse recently got even more interesting from a music business perspective, buying a majority stake in the rights of catalogs created by stars such as Swedish House Mafia and Avicii.

On this podcast, Per Sundin tells us how Pophouse plans to “amplify” the artist brands behind this catalog music using lessons learned from working with ABBA.

He also discusses why he’s confident – after major financial investment – that the ABBA Voyage show will become profitable, will go global, and will change the face of ‘virtual’ artist performances forever more.

Sundin further explains why he believes that the major record companies will soon switch their smartest executives (if they haven’t already) to focus more on catalog, rather than frontline, music.

Listen to the Podcast above or read an edited and abridged Q&A below…

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED AT POPHOUSE FROM EXTENDING THE ABBA BRAND INTO THESE VARIOUS DIFFERENT WORLDS – ABBA VOYAGE, MAMMA MIA: THE PARTY ETC?

ABBA is a perfect example of how to treat a catalog. They did their last album in 1981. Fast forward to 2020 and they made more money from their music 40 years later approximately. How is that?

One of the big reasons is that the music is fantastic… what Bjorn and Benny created, together with Frida and Agnetha’s voices, is just still unbelievably good.

“ABBA MADE MORE MONEY IN 2020 THAN IN 1981 FROM THEIR [RECORDED] MUSIC.”

But [the other reason is that] music ages better than wine, better than anything. It’s like a real estate property.

Look at [classic] TV series from [decades ago], if it’s Dallas or Falcon Crest; if you [watch] them today, the editing is too slow, the lighting on the set [doesn’t look right] – it’s just totally different from today’s style.

Yet if you listen to music from the ’60s, ’70s, or ’80s, it’s super-competitive against the music that’s produced today.

As I said, ABBA made more money in 2020 than in 1981 from their [recorded] music. And that’s very interesting, because [it shows] what the Mamma Mia! musical did.

Just in London, [that show] has been playing for 20 years – 9 million people have seen it. A movie came from that, then the second [Mamma Mia] movie came, then the prequel to the Mamma Mia musical – Mamma Mia: The Party, which is a dinner show. And now ABBA Voyage.

So [ABBA]’s constantly evolving, keeping the music alive, keeping that fantastic music exposed to new generations. That’s really a stellar phenomenon.

WHAT IS YOUR ACQUISITION STRATEGY AT POPHOUSE? HOW DO YOU FEEL YOU DIFFER TO OTHERS IN THE CATALOG ACQUISITIONS MUSIC MARKET?

You have a lot of companies now [buying] publishing or masters from artists. And they see it as a good investment, because you can have a return on investment of 5%, 6% or 7%. And then if the music market grows by 10% per year [on top], you’re going to have a quite good asset class.

We [at Pophouse] don’t buy catalogs to put them on a shelf and let them grow slowly.

When we do due diligence of an artist’s catalog, of course we do financial due diligence, but we also do due diligence of the brand and the narrative – really doing a deep dive into the history. Is there a story here to tell? Is there a brand not being [fully] exposed for a new generation to discover?

“IS THERE A STORY HERE TO TELL? IS THERE A BRAND NOT BEING [FULLY] EXPOSED FOR A NEW GENERATION TO DISCOVER?”

We have hired the best people in storytelling. We hired a British guy, James McKnight, who was Creative Director for the Harry Potter [franchise] at the Blair [Partnership], that’s JK Rowling’s agent.

He is now head of Entertainment R&D at Pophouse. Together with his team in London, before we buy anything, we create the DNA for the artists, we create [a storytelling] manifesto which we share with the estate or the artists.

We have a 10-year plan [for each acquisition]… that’s what makes us different from everyone else. What we call “amplifying entertainment”.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM THE DEVELOPMENT OF ABBA VOYAGE?

It started 2016 with Simon Fuller. [He] contacted me, and we met in L.A. His idea was to do an ABBA hologram show; he was referring to [hologram shows like] Tupac at Coachella [2012] and Michael Jackson at the Billboard awards [2014], and how you take that on tour.

I went back to Stockholm, and I did a presentation to Bjorn and Benny and their manager, and Benny’s son, Ludvig, and they were enthusiastic about [the idea].

So we went to Vegas and saw the Michael Jackson No.1 show which has a hologram. And… we didn’t like it. We wanted something else.

We understood [that] to do a hologram for one song is cool. But for one and a half hours, it’s impossible.

We had to start all over again. And then the producers, together with Ludvig Andersson and Svana Gisla, they contacted Industrial Light and Magic – the George Lucas company that did Star Wars – which is now owned by Disney.

We really didn’t really [have] the whole picture of how it was going to be. Will it be effective? Will it be immersive? Or it will just be fun for 10/15 minutes? There were a lot of questions.

“THE SECOND SONG WAS LAY ALL YOUR LOVE ON ME, AND I STARTED TO CRY – WITH RELIEF.”

But we invested [in ABBA Voyage] as Pophouse; we went in with the money together with Benny Anderson’s production company. Then we took it to the next level… and then Covid happened!

And so it was really: can we continue? We had to build our own arena, which we’ve [built] in Stratford, east of London.

We postponed it for six months. And then we found the gap just between the first and the second wave of Covid. We were able to record [the motion capture] in London, which was just unbelievably lucky under the circumstances.

ILM, together with the Creative Director, Baillie Walsh, started work on it. Four weeks before the premiere, we didn’t really know how it was going to be, how [audiences] were going to feel.

But then they called me into the arena; I was sitting myself in this big arena for 3,000 seats, and they played me four songs.

The second song was Lay All Your Love On Me, and I started to cry – with relief. Tears just flooded. It was so special, because I just felt: ‘This is going to work.’ Until then I wasn’t sure.

There was so much money [risked], so many investments – from Swedish investors, Universal [Music Group] chipped in a lot of money. And then to be there at the premiere, and see the reaction from the people, it’s still a thrill. How their jaws drop, they scream for the encore. You have to see it; it’s fantastic.

SURELY THIS IS NOW GOING TO SET A TREND, WITH MORE ARTISTS DOING ‘VOYAGE’-TYPE PRODUCTIONS. THAT’S GOING TO BE GREAT NEWS FOR ARTISTS’ LEGACIES, PERHAPS NOT SUCH GOOD NEWS FOR TRIBUTE BANDS…

Yes. It will take some time – three to five years. We had close to 900 CGI engineers working [on ABBA Voyage] at the same time.

This was bigger for ILM, they told us [production-wise] than the new Star Wars movie. They’ve done fantastic work with this, but it’s not cheap. Of course, [the technology] will go down in price eventually over the years, but it will take time.

ABBA was the perfect match, the perfect storm for this because they haven’t been touring for 40 years. They’ve been the holy grail [prospective reunion] for Live Nation and AEG and others to take on tour; there has always been a huge demand for an ABBA reunion. But they’ve always said we want the audience to remember us as we were.

“ARE THERE ANY ARTISTS WE BELIEVE THAT COULD DO THIS IN A SIMILAR WAY WITH A BIG FRANCHISE? YES, WE DO. WE’VE BEEN IN CONTACT WITH A COUPLE OF THEM.”

We need to have 3 million visitors [pay for tickets] to the ABBA Voyage show for it to break even. We’ve had 134 sold-out concerts so far – and I say ‘concerts’ because it’s a live band that [accompanies the experience].

It’s not for everyone, but yes [other] bands and artists will do this, maybe in a different way.

We’re looking at that too as Pophouse: Are there any artists that we believe could do this in a similar way with a big franchise? And yes, we do. We’ve been in contact with a couple of them. But again, it will take 3-5 years.

YOU’RE CONFIDENT OF BREAKING EVEN WITH ABBA VOYAGE? 3 MILLION IS A LOT OF TICKETS TO SELL.

We’ve sold 650,000 tickets so far. And we actually sold more tickets this week than when we have the premiere of the show.

So yes, I’m very confident. And the other interesting thing with this show is that, simultaneously, ABBA can be [playing] in Las Vegas, in Singapore, in Sydney, in Sao Paulo.

We believe that we will reach those targets.

AFTER STREAMING, WHAT DO YOU THINK THE NEXT BIG REVOLUTION IS GOING TO BE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?

I was very much at the forefront of [the music industry] going over to streaming, not because I was especially smart, or intelligent, it was more that I was desperate. Because the old business model was falling down, and especially in Sweden people thought it was their right to illegally download music.

Now we have to accept that music is not a product business anymore. It’s a brand business, it’s name and likeness; it’s all about that now.

Really smart people work at Universal [Music Group] – I think Lucian [Grainge] hires the best people there is. But the best and smartest of [these people] are working on frontline, working with signing new artists, and that’s really a challenge right now. Because the [bigger] money and the assets are in their catalogs; Universal, Warner, and Sony all have fantastic catalog products.

I started my career in the special marketing team at Sony Music, and back then we were called the ‘undertaker’. Because if an album fell off the Top 40 chart, we [were allowed to] start working with it.

We would put them down to ‘nice price’, decrease the price of the CDs, or put songs on compilations.

“MUSIC IS NOT A PRODUCT BUSINESS ANYMORE. IT’S A BRAND BUSINESS, IT’S NAME AND LIKENESS.”

Now, take Kate Bush as a perfect example, [songs] are coming from 30 years behind and going to the top of the charts.

[At Pophouse], we’re trying to find the catalogs of music of artists that have the best potential to cater to the new generation [of people] below 30 years old today.

That’s why I think that the music industry also going to change. Look what Disney does with Star Wars – they don’t create a new franchise [like Star Wars]; they really evolve Star Wars into spin-offs, into TV series around it, into everything. What they’re doing is so fantastic.

It’s the same with Marvel, they’re using old [IP], rebooting it into new [products] because it’s so expensive to invest into a new [intellectual property], and to have that breakthrough and reach a lot of people.

“I THINK THAT THE SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE RECORD COMPANIES WILL SOON START WORKING IN THE CATALOG DEPARTMENTS.”

Billie Eilish is one of the few [new superstars in music] that really hit the ground running and did something different, and [she has] been a huge breakthrough in the music industry. But I think [that will become] more and more seldom.

Eighty percent of the listening at Spotify in the US is [of music that is] older than two years. And the tough thing now [for new artists] is to break through the noise. How do you cut through the noise and get into a new playlist?

That’s why I think that the smartest people in the record companies will soon start working in the catalog departments, and seeing these assets in a different way: ‘How can we help expose this fantastic catalog, these golden nuggets, that can be amplified for a new audience?’

IMAGINE I’M HANDING YOU THE KEYS TO RUN A GLOBAL MAJOR MUSIC COMPANY FOR A YEAR. WHAT WOULD BE YOUR FIRST PRIORITY AS GLOBAL CEO OF THAT KIND OF ORGANIZATION?

First of all, you should see the assets that you are in control of: you have a deal with the artists’ estate or the artists themselves that you can nurture and amplify and exploit in many, many different ways.

But you need to [appreciate] that every [artist] brand is unique, and you need to have a plan for that.

I also think that what’s wrong today in the music business is how it’s set up. [Some in] the music industry still see the music market as country-by-country. We’re not living in that world anymore.

“YOU CAN’T LOOK AT IT AS COUNTRY BY COUNTRY, WE LIVE IN A GLOBAL WORLD WITHOUT ANY BORDERS. I THINK THAT’S OLD-FASHIONED.”

All the organizations – PROs, everyone that collects money, how long time it takes, everything from radio, to public performance, to neighboring rights. It needs big, big change.

And then I would hire the smartest marketers out there.

Universal has really, really intelligent people working there. It’s just a question of how to cut them loose. And that’s what I would do.

The [frontline major] labels in the US today, [don’t] work their catalog. It’s done by a special department, which I think is wrong.

https://open.spotify.com/show/0JcupwhLzN6mvn4aGUgFCN

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/podcast/per-sundin-on-abba-pophouses-acquisition-strategy-and-why-he-thinks-the-smartest-people-at-record-companies-will-soon-be-working-on-catalog

domingo, 16 de octubre de 2022

Hasselbacken won the Sign Prize 2022

ljuskultur instagram

text : swedish, english, español
Hasselbacken vann Skyltpriset 2022 i kategorin "Rekostruerad skylt". Den vackra ljusportalen leder åter besökarna uppför trapporna till hotellet och nöjesplatsen.
Design: @palomadesignstudio @dinelljohansson
Lverantör: SKYLTGRUPPEN
photo : @akeeson...
---------------
Hasselbacken won the Sign Prize 2022 in the category "Reconstructed sign". The beautiful portal of light again leads visitors up the stairs to the hotel and entertainment venue.
Design: @palomadesignstudio @dinelljohansson
Supplier: SKYLTGRUPTEN
photo: @akeeson
-------------------------
Hasselbacken ganó el Sign Prize 2022 en la categoría "Señal reconstruida". El hermoso portal de luz conduce nuevamente a los visitantes por las escaleras hasta el hotel y el lugar de entretenimiento.
Diseño: @palomadesignstudio @dinelljohansson
Proveedor: SKYLTGRUPTEN
photo: @akeeson

viernes, 14 de octubre de 2022

ABBA Voyage Premiere - Frida and Björn

Frida and Björn

photo Kirsty Ryan

May 26th, 2022 ABBA Arena

ABBA’s Triumphant Return

October 14, 2022, 6 AM ET

Take a chance on them.

By James Parker

I’ve seen the best. The maddest and the fieriest and the deepest and the heaviest. I’ve watched them, open-mouthed: HR, from Bad Brains, executing a perfect backflip to land crisply on the band’s last syllable of chord-crash; Patti Smith singing “Beneath the Southern Cross,” heaving open the doors to the underworld with the pressure of her own breath; Iggy Pop, berserk, doing “I Wanna Be Your Dog” with Sonic Youth as his backing band. And none of these, none of these, transported me in quite the manner in which I was transported a few weeks ago by a vision of ABBA.

And it was a vision. At a purpose-built arena in East London, ABBA—those smiley, soft-spoken radicals; those almost blandly futuristic Swedes—has orchestrated an immaculate 3,000-person, 95-minute digital hallucination. This is CGI stuff, the outer limit. Four figures appear onstage before us, avatars, daemons, numina, whatever they are, denser than holograms, more shimmeringly charged than human beings, with a kind of atomic brightness, composites of light and longing. And we know them: Björn, Benny, Agnetha, Frida, in their late-’70s/early-’80s pomp, their poppiest plumage, variously nodding and swishing and keening and twinkling and making little gracious gestures. Huge sidescreens give us close-ups, flashes of realism—the eyes, the sweat on the cheekbones. Holy shit. ABBA!

ABBA Voyage was five years and zillions of dollars in the making, a meisterwerk created with Industrial Light & Magic, the visual-effects company founded by George Lucas. And it’s the future, quite obviously. Present-day old-age ABBA, having worked for weeks in motion-capture suits to get the genetic code of ABBA-ness into the ILM computers, can now sit back as these radiant editions of their younger, prettier selves sell the place out night after night. The brain buys it, is the point: Your wobbly old analog brain, as you watch these figments come high-heeling out of the digital ether, is very happy to accept them as real. Very happy to weep, cheer, join in the chorus, wave your arms. It’s a success, artistically and … neurologically. This could go to Vegas, this could go to Sydney, this could go anywhere. Everywhere. The Rolling Stones could do it. Lana Del Rey could do it. The pop star as pure illusion, pure imago, pure energy state, infinitely reproducible and infinitely potent if you have the tech. David Bowie, where are you?

(Actually, I know where David Bowie is, at least tonight. He is weirdly inhabiting the cyberapparition of ABBA’s Frida, who is revealed by this experience, and by the trick of time, as not a sweet and cheesy pop star but a teetering, angular ’70s-style rock star, loaded with otherworldliness. Her disco hauteur, her hair of Ziggy-est red, the filter of alienation on her beauty, and the seam of coldness in her voice. Frida’s onstage authority, even as the rest of ABBA boogies and beams around her, even as she boogies and beams, is Bowie-esque, Bowie-echoing, no other way to put it.)

They—“they”—open with the massive, foreboding synth-throb of “The Visitors.” Perfect choice: the most paranoid and eerily electronicized of all ABBA songs. “I hear the doorbell ring and suddenly the panic takes me / The sound so ominously tearing through the silence.” Sung by Frida, of course, in a sinuous, ceremonial, artificially thinned voice. “And now they’ve come to take me / Come to break me …” She—“she”—raises her arms, phoenixlike, and light spatters off her amazing, bedazzling cape, all around the arena. It’s jaw-dropping, literally: I go Uuuuuuuuh …

Part of the secret of ABBA’s music is its inorganic quality—the ticktock notes at the beginning of “Mamma Mia,” the robotically chanted backing vocals to “Take a Chance on Me”—as if among its primary elements of tinkly Euro-pop and Scandinavian sing-along were Kraftwerk and Gary Numan. ABBA Voyage’s director, Baillie Walsh, when asked in the official concert program how he would describe ABBA to someone who’s never heard them, answers: “A folk group from Mars.”

And then there’s the repression. The frozen lake of sadness. Benny and Björn were a grinning hit factory, a two-man Brill Building, and the group as a whole never failed to project a sheen of super-trouper professionalism. But the music of ABBA is quietly thunderous with heartbreak and failure. “Deep inside / Both of us can feel the autumn chill …” Agnetha was married to Björn, and Frida was married to Benny, and both of these marriages collapsed, sundered like calving glaciers as ABBA went global. “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” at the arena in London, is almost sensory-emotional overkill: Refracted and merging mirror images of the two couples ripple across the stage as the anthemic breakup lyrics shake our ribs. “We just have to face it / This time (this time) we’re through.” Strong men cry—or I do, anyway—at the peculiarly ringing metallic melancholy of great, late ABBA.

The whole world loves ABBA, but England especially, because of the repression (see above). So ABBA Voyage opened in England, in the special arena—Nordically tasteful in dark metal and blond wood, like the back parts of Keflavík airport—at Pudding Mill Lane, in London’s redeveloped Docklands. Seven performances a week, sold out for months to come. The crowd bubbles. The crowd is thrilled to be there. “Dancing Queen” is a celestial event; a kind of black hole of joy; a rushing, released groove unlike any other in the ABBA songbook. The ushers in the aisles turn to us and wave their arms over their heads, so we wave ours too—we in our feather boas and our sensible shirts, our gleaming youth and our dowdy middle age, our gayness and our straightness, a solid wedge of the Great British Public. ABBA people.

Cartilaginous tubes of Nothingness. That’s a line I scribbled in my notebook at some point in the evening. I must have been getting freaked out. Because it was freaky, undergoing the memory onslaught of compacted decades of ABBA experience while gazing enraptured at something that, when you got right down to it, wasn’t there. In the spaces between these near-angelic digital beings, in the spaces behind them, the unreality comes trickling in—through holes and portals and cartilaginous tubes of nothingness. Here’s what you don’t get, will never get, at an event like this: the sensation of the performers locking in, intensifying, beginning to draw their power from a grid that transcends the immediate moment. Power like a gift, pouring out of the holy matrix. That won’t happen. Even if the Björn avatar does a backflip at the end of “The Winner Takes It All,” or humps the stage like Iggy Pop.

But I’m old, aren’t I, and my skin is cold, and I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. This is what’s coming, like it (or love it) or not. And for ABBA, with their silvery excellence, their poignancy and remoteness and smilingness, and their astrally piercing harmonies, it’s perfect. It’s state-of-the-art. They can live forever like this. There’s an ABBA thing, a resurgence, an indulgence, going on right now on TikTok. Great pop never dies. And now it really never dies. Ground control to Major Tom: Stay right where you are. No need to come back to Earth. “To be or not to be,” says the enigmatic Benny avatar to the audience at ABBA Voyage, musing between songs. “That is no longer the question.”

This article appears in the November 2022 print edition with the headline “Take a Chance on Them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/11/virtual-abba-london-concert/671531/