Abba announce first new music since 1982

Abba announce first new music since 1982
By Mark Savage
BBC Music reporter
27 April 2018

Agregar leyenda

Pop group Abba have returned to the studio to record their first new music since the 1980s.

The Swedish quartet said the new material was an "unexpected consequence" of their recent decision to put together a "virtual reality" tour.

"We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the studio," the band said on Instagram.

"And it was like time stood still."

No release date has been set for the new songs - but one of them, titled I Still Have Faith In You, will be performed in December on a TV special broadcast by the BBC and NBC.




Abba's spokesperson Gorel Hanser told the BBC the atmosphere in the studio was "magic".

"It was like no time had passed at all," she said. "It was like the olden days. They were happy, it was easy and warm-hearted, and it was actually quite moving. I wasn't the only one with tears in my eyes."

But she said said the group would not perform live, other than as holograms in the forthcoming Abba Avatar tour.

"It's a studio moment, I can promise you," she said. "Don't expect too much."

Image Copyright @BBCPM@BBCPM
Report
The band have resisted pressure to reform since they stopped recording together in 1982, despite a reported $1bn (£689m) offer to tour in 2000.

In an interview with the BBC in 2013, Agnetha Faltskog said she preferred to leave the band in the past.

"It was such a long time ago, and we are getting older, and we have our different lives," she explained.

News of the new material comes in a bumper year for Abba fans. An immersive exhibition based on the band's career is running on London's South Bank, while Chess, the musical Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson wrote with Sir Tim Rice, is being revived in the West End.

Will Abba's new music ruin their legacy?
Abba give first performance in 30 years
6 shocks from the Mamma Mia 2 trailer
Abba's Agnetha comes out of retirement
A sequel to the film version of Mamma Mia!, starring Amanda Seyfried, Lily James and Cher, will be released on 20 July.

Speaking to BBC News, Rod Stephen, founder of Abba tribute act Bjorn Again, described the new material as "a whole new beginning".

Image copyrightSHUTTERSTOCK
Image caption
Bjorn, Anni-Frid, Agnetha and Benny pictured at the Swedish production of Mamma Mia in 2016
"I heard about Abba releasing new songs and I was instantly, like everyone else in the Abba community, really excited to know what the songs were and how they're going to sound. Will it have that 1970s sound or will it be up to date?

"It's brilliant really, because we love Abba's music to death. I just hope they're great songs, I hope they're equivalent to Dancing Queen or Mamma Mia."

He added: "I know Benny and Bjorn wouldn't release something in this way unless they were good songs."

Speaking to the BBC's Adam Fleming last week, Ulvaeus had hinted that there could be new material. Here's what he said:


Media captionBjorn Ulvaeus hints there could be new ABBA material
How did the Abba avatar idea come about?

We were introduced to an idea by Simon Fuller who is, as you know, an entertainment entrepreneur - [creator of] the format of American Idol and manager of the Spice Girls and so forth.

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 halfway through and it's already mind-boggling.

What does it actually look like? Does it look like a younger you?

Yes. Real. And they say once it's finished you'll never see that it's not a human being. And what attracted me personally to this is of course I'm always curious, scientifically-curious and this is new technology and we are pioneers. So I thought, 'Yeah let's go for it,' and you know the other three went for it as well.

Skip Youtube post by AbbaVEVO

Warning: Third party content may contain adverts
Report
End of Youtube post by AbbaVEVO
What is the actual format of the tribute show going to be? Is it going to be these Abba-tars all the way though?

No, other people as well. And as for the format I'm not entirely sure what it's going to look like but some sort of tribute show with these Abba-tars for want of a better word as the kind of centrepiece.

Will you write new material for it?

We don't know what the Abba-tars will sing yet but there's lots to choose from of the old stuff and yeah, I'm not ready to say that yet.

So there could be new songs…

I'm… it's up in the air.

Stay tuned…

Yeah.

Why not reform and have a reunion? The real you, rather than the virtual ones.

Yeah, why not? Well… it never seemed like a good idea. It's not that we haven't had offers over the years. But somehow we always thought that the Abba that people have in their minds are the once-young and energetic group from the '70s. And we just never felt the urge to go on tour, I guess.

On the whole we toured very little. We had like 10 years together and of those 10 years maybe we toured, like, seven months. Not more than that. So to go on tour as a geriatric, I don't know!

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

But their joint project completely eclipsed their previous successes. After winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo in 1974, the band sold almost 400 million singles and albums around the world.

Mamma Mia!, the musical based on their hits and produced by Ulvaeus and Andersson, has been seen by more than 50 million people.

During their most successful period, the band survived marriage break-ups between Ulvaeus and Faltskog, and Lyngstad and Andersson, but they finally called it a day in 1983.

Their final recording sessions, 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.





http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43924609

ABBA reunion: Swedish group announce first new music in 35 years

ABBA reunion: Swedish group announce first new music in 35 years
Group posted a joint statement that was echoed by their manager, announcing an upcoming ‘Abbatar’ tour and two new songs
ABBA have announced they are set to release new music for the first time in 35 years.

Posting a statement on the official ABBA Instagram account, the band wrote: “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. And it was like time had stood still and that we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!”


The statement continued: “It resulted in two new songs and one of them ‘I Still Have Faith In You’ will be performed by our digital selves in a TV special produced by NBC and the BBC aimed for broadcasting in December.


https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/abba-reunion-new-music-songs-sweden-group-release-uk-latest-news-a8325296.html

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

Abba announce first new songs for 35 years
Swedish four-piece take to Instagram to announce two releases that will form part of an ‘avatar tour project’

Alexis Petridis: Abba’s return will be either genius or disaster – but nothing in between
‘I Still Have Faith In You’ - What do you think Abba’s new song will be like?



Abba have announced that they have written and recorded their first new songs since they split in 1983.

The Swedish four-piece, who had nine No 1 hits in the UK between 1974 and 1980, and who have sold hundreds of millions of records worldwide, announced on Instagram that they had recorded two new songs for a project in which avatars of the band will perform.

Abba's return will be either genius or disaster – but nothing in between
Alexis Petridis
Alexis Petridis
Read more
The band said in a statement: “The decision to go ahead with the exciting Abba avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence. We all felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!”

One of the two new songs that resulted, called I Still Have Faith in You, will feature in a TV special to air in December.

The statement concluded: “We may have come of age, but the song is new. And it feels good.”

Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus revealed details of the band’s forthcoming project in Brussels earlier this week. The centrepiece is the two-hour TV show co-produced by NBC and the BBC, which will see the band perform as computer-generated avatars. Ulvaeus said the band had been digitally scanned and “de-aged” to look like they did in 1979, when they performed their third and final tour.

The avatars are then set to tour the world from next year.

Abba formed in Stockholm in 1972. They comprised two couples: Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog; and Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, all of whom had enjoyed musical careers in Sweden. The group burst on to the international stage after winning the Eurovision song contest in Brighton in 1974 with their song Waterloo.

Advertisement

From the mid-70s until they split, Abba built up a formidable arsenal of global hits including Knowing Me, Knowing You, Take a Chance on Me, Dancing Queen and The Name of the Game – all of which reached No 1 in the UK.

Fältskog and Lyngstad were the lead singers; Andersson and Ulvaeus composed the songs. Never less than impeccably produced and performed, Abba’s records were critically disdained at the time, but their popularity has endured. Their 1992 compilation Abba Gold has sold 30m copies – more than 5m of those in the Britain – and .

Their jukebox musical Mamma Mia! debuted in the West End in 1999 and is still running both in London and worldwide; its website claims that it has been seen by 60 million people in 440 cities.


Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras
Read more
The stage show was adapted into a film in 2008, which grossed $615m (£447m) worldwide. A sequel, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, will be released in June. The actor Lily James – who is set to appear alongside the cast of the first film including Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried and Colin Firth – : “There’s lot of songs in there, lots of new ones. Lots of ones, actually, that weren’t in my repertoire of Abba and I think they’re going to be huge hits again, and reawaken the love of Abba.”

Abba’s split in 1983 followed the divorces of both couples. Ulvaeus and Andersson went on to write two musicals, including Chess – a revival by the English National Opera opens on Friday in London – before largely devoting themselves to Abba’s legacy. Fältskog and Lyngstad have kept much lower profiles, though Fältskog – long claimed to be a recluse – returned to pop music with an album, A, which was released in 2013.

The group have long held out against lucrative offers to reform – they were reported to have been offered $1bn to play a concert in 2000. In 2014, Ulvaeus told Billboard: “you will never see us on stage again … we don’t need the money, for one thing.”

Peter Robinson, editor of Popjustice, described the announcement as “the biggest pop news of the 21st century. Most fans grudgingly admired Abba’s refusal to record new music, but I think we all sometimes daydreamed about the band possibly, maybe, one day having a rethink at the right time, on the right terms and for the right reasons, which seems to be what’s happened here.” He added: “It’s a pop miracle.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/27/abba-announce-first-new-songs-for-35-years


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

ABBA to release first new material in 35 years
By Michael Idato27 April 2018 — 10:35pm


It may be incorrect to say that the Swedish supergroup ABBA have got back together; for many years they took great pain to point out that they had never formally broken up.
And yet news that they have reformed to record two new songs has been greeted around the world like the second coming, albeit one seasoned in blue eyeshadow and a little bit of glitter.
ABBA will release new material for the first time in 35 years.
ABBA will release new material for the first time in 35 years.

Photo: AP
The four members of the group - Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad - have announced they have recorded two new songs.
The first is titled I Still Have Faith in You, and will be released in November as part of an already announced digital concert television project in which computer-generated "Abbatars" of the group will perform with a live band.
The second is still unknown.
Advertisement

"The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence," a statement from the group said.
"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."

The group described the experience as "extremely joyous".
"It was like time had stood still and that we had only been away on a short holiday. We may have come of age, but the song is new and it feels good."
Though they are one of the most successful groups in the history of pop music, there has always been something very simple and organic about their process.
Ulvaeus and Andersson famously wrote the group's best music in a little cottage on an island in the Swedish archipelago and, despite the musical complexity of the songs, did not put music notation to paper.
Benny and Frida were the first off the plane to wave to fans at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport in 1977.
Benny and Frida were the first off the plane to wave to fans at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport in 1977.

Photo: The Age
They also famously experimented in the studio, recording the same song in several styles, and sometimes with different lyrics, until they were happy with a final version.
The timing of the announcement cannot be discounted - a week ahead of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon, Portugal. ABBA's big break came at 1974's Eurovision, at The Dome, in Brighton, in the UK, when they sang one of their biggest hits, Waterloo.
What followed was stunning, transforming them into a worldwide phenomenon, as hit piled on hit: Mamma Mia, Fernando, SOS, Dancing Queen, Chiquitita and more. As with success came Money, Money, Money.
The recipe was curiously European but nonetheless infectious: the gentle flirtation between the couples - Fältskog and Ulvaeus, Lyngstad and Andersson - the often eccentric wardrobe, the easily mimicked choreography. And those tearaway cat dresses, oh my.
For eight years they topped the charts, and then came divorce, tension and, ultimately, dissolution.
Though it was never an explicit part of their songwriting style, ABBA's most complex songs did seem to bring an echo of their real-world experience into their music.
Slipping Through My Fingers came straight from Bjorn and Agnetha's heartbreak as their daughter Linda grew up. I'm a Marionette talked to the exhaustion of their touring fame, and of course The Winner Takes It All as their marriages - and the band - began to disintegrate.
They group last appeared together - formally, as ABBA - on Britain's The Late, Late Breakfast Show on December 11, 1982.

The rebirth of the band - if they ever truly went away - was kicked off in the 1990s with the release of ABBA Gold in 1992, and two Australian films in 1994, Muriel's Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Fitting perhaps, as Australia had been one of the first coutries outside Europe to embrace them.
And then Mamma Mia, the monstrous Broadway hit, which places a collection of their songs into the loose framework of a Greek romantic comedy, came in 1999; the appearance of all four members of ABBA at the 2008 Swedish premiere of the musical was properly historic.
A film version came out in 2008, and a sequel is due later this year.
The question of whether they would ever reform is more complex. For many years all four were adamant they would not. Though Ulvaeus and Andersson continued working together, Fältskog and Lyngstad had moved on.
Former ABBA members Bjorn Ulvaeus, left, and Benny Andersson with actress Catherine Johnson at a performance of the musical Mamma Mia! in London.
Former ABBA members Bjorn Ulvaeus, left, and Benny Andersson with actress Catherine Johnson at a performance of the musical Mamma Mia! in London.

Photo: AP
"I think we have to accept that it will not happen, because we are too old and each one of us has their own life," Fältskog, by a noticeable measure the most reclusive of the four, said in 2013. "Too many years have gone by since we stopped and there's really no meaning in putting us together again."
And then a year later, she said: "As long as we can sing and play, then why not? I would love to, but it's up to Björn and Benny."
Though The Way Old Friends Do was not their last recorded song, it seems now to sit in their own musical history, a curious pivot between the group's original repertoire and this strange moment of historic reconnection.
After fights and words of violence / we make up with each other / the way old friends do, it goes. Times of joy and times of sorrow / we will always see it through / I don't care what comes tomorrow / we can face it together, the way old friends do.
It makes the choice of title for their first new release in 35 years all the more signficant: I Still Have Faith in You.
As their fans always, unwaveringly, had in them.

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/abba-to-release-first-new-material-in-35-years-20180427-p4zc5s.html