Swedish pop group ABBA will release their first album in 40 years on November 5. The new album, Voyage, is a follow up to The Visitors that was released in 1981, AP reported on Friday.
The group will also begin a series of virtual concerts using digital projections of their younger selves, from May 27 in London. Two songs from the album, I Still Have Faith in You and Don’t Shut Me Down, are out.
“We took a break in the spring of 1982 and now we’ve decided it’s time to end it,” ABBA said in a statement Thursday. “They say it’s foolhardy to wait more than 40 years between albums, so we’ve recorded a follow-up to ‘The Visitors.’”
ABBA – an acronym of the names of its members Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad – was formed in Stockholm in 1972.
The group achieved fame in 1974 after winning the Eurovision song contest in Brighton, England, for their song Waterloo. They released several hit songs, including Take a Chance on Me, Dancing Queen, The Name of the Game and Knowing Me, Knowing You before they split up. All these songs topped the United Kingdom charts.
Even after the split, their music has remained popular. The group’s 1992 greatest hits collection, Abba Gold, is the longest-running album in the UK album chart, according to The Guardian. In July, Abba Gold was the first album to be in the chart for over 1,000 weeks.
In 2010, ABBA was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 2018, the members of the band announced their comeback, saying they had written two songs and performed them using their computer-generated avatars.
On Thursday, Björn Ulvaeus said around four or five years ago, it was suggested that they tour using hologram projections. “And we found out very soon that that wasn’t even possible because holograms is an old technology, but I mean, the vision was there of having our digital selves, that even was a possibility,” he said at a press conference.
For weeks, the group sang and played every day for hours and used motion capture and other technologies to create the digital avatars for 22 songs in their upcoming tour.
“We dressed up in a leotards with dots or little things on them,” Ulvaeus said. “And we had dots in our faces and helmets with cameras. And there we were, the four of us on stage together doing these songs.”
Benny Andersson added: “I’d say the only big problem was that we had to shave our beards. I’ve had my beard for 50 years.”
Ulvaeus said they chose to begin their tour in London as it is the “best city to be in when it comes to entertainment, theatre, musicals”.
When asked what the best thing about being in ABBA was, Andersson said: “Not having to worry about the money. You are free to do anything, to keep on writing the music.”
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