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All four ABBA members publicly reunite for first time in 40 years at Voyage launch

26 May 2022, 19:06 | Updated: 27 May 2022, 07:54

By Tom Eames

It was an incredible moment for ABBA fans, as the foursome finally reunited in public for the first time in decades.

Tonight (May 26) saw the launch of ABBA Voyage in London, the special concert that features virtual 'ABBAtars' alongside a live band and orchestra.

To open the live concert residency at the specially-built ABBA Arena, all four ABBA stars were in attendance.

• ABBA Voyage concert begins in London: Tickets, dates, setlist and more facts revealed
• ABBA unveil super-realistic virtual 'ABBAtars' ahead of Voyage live shows
• ABBA reveal hopes and fears for Voyage show: 'Making ABBA-tars was like filming Top of the Pops'

Agnetha Faltskog , Benny Andersson , Bjorn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad all appeared together on stage, to the delight of fans in attendance and around the world.

ABBA Voyage feature ABBA as virtual avatars, showing the group as they appeared in 1979. The concerts take place at the venue at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.

The digital versions of ABBA were created with motion-capture and performance techniques using the four band members, and the team from Industrial Light & Magic, the company founded by George Lucas.

Abba reunite in London for first time since 1982 for Voyage concert

The arrival we've all been waiting for! #ABBAVoyage pic.twitter.com/M2I1nyCvex — ABBA Voyage (@ABBAVoyage) May 26, 2022

They👏 Are👏 Here👏 #ABBAVoyage pic.twitter.com/J15ciHsHS3 — ABBA Voyage (@ABBAVoyage) May 26, 2022

The last time ABBA were seen together in public was on a British TV appearance back in late 1982, 40 years ago.

Apart from performing a Swedish song as a birthday party surprise for manager Stig Andersson in 1986, the group would not be on stage together again for over 30 years after that.

In 2016, the four members of ABBA reunited on stage for an impromptu performance of 'Me and I' at a private gala in Sweden. But this was the first time they were seen in public together.

ABBA also reunited for their long-awaited comeback album Voyage , which was one of the best-selling albums of 2021.

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ABBA Voyage celebrates 1st Anniversary – New Images released

As ABBA Voyage prepares to celebrate its first anniversary new production images of the concert have been released.

Take a look at these new production photos of the concert released to celebrate the first anniversary of this extraordinary celebration of the music of ABBA. On 27thMay, ABBA fans from around the world will come together to mark the occassion.

BOOK ABBA VOYAGE TICKETS

One year ago, all four members of ABBA were in attendance for the opening night of ABBA Voyage, their revolutionary concert which sees them perform their greatest hits as digital avatars, in their very own purpose built at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.

Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were joined by the producers Svana Gisla and Ludvig Andersson, along with director Baillie Walsh, and an invited audience of VIPs, including the King and Queen of Sweden and the Mayor of London, friends and family, media and fans.

Celebrating the creation of the concert, Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA said, “If you build the right machine, and you build it well, then it exceeds the sum of its parts. The soul of the songs comes alive. And that soul isn’t just down to what you see on stage. It’s the stories and memories that come with it. Both yours and ours.”

Anni-Frid Lyngstad went on to talk about her astonishment of seeing her digital self on stage, “It’s hard to fully grasp that it isn’t me,” says Frida, “and yet it is me. I can certainly see myself in the digital figure, the gestures, the facial expressions, the eyes that express all sorts of feelings. It’s absurd but it’s real!”. Agnetha Fältskog added, “For a whole month, we got into our ‘space suits’ and helmets to perform our songs. A fantastic team behind hundreds of monitors, following it all, from tip to toe, to capture our movements and facial expressions. Sometimes all four of us wondered what we had got ourselves into, but we had many wonderful laughs, looking at one another.”

To summarise the whole project Benny Andersson said, “Did we expect the response to be so intense? No. We didn’t know at all. And, do you know what? It’s always been that way. From day one. You start with a song and beyond that you have no control. Will people like it as much as we do? Will people ignore it? People will tell you that they know – people in the business. But no one ever knows. And it was the same with this”

Since opening on the 27th May 2022, ABBA Voyage has welcomed over one million fans, travelling from far and wide across the globe to witness ABBA taking to the stage as digital avatars at the purpose built arena located at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The event has had a revolving door of VIPs coming through the doors, including the likes of: Tom Hanks, Dua Lipa, Graham Norton, Mae Muller, Jack Whitehall, Olivia Rodrigo, Sir Barry Gibb and even British royalty, Queen Camilla.

ABBA Voyage is now booking to May 2024.

ABBA in London – A Fans Guide to enjoying ABBA Mania.

Douglas Mayo has had a life long love affair with musical theatre. He has authored several books on publicity and marketing for amateur theatre groups. He is in the process of developing a musical based on his original story concept.

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ABBA Voyage

It’s been a while since we made music together. Almost 40 years, actually. We took a break in the spring of 1982 and now we’ve decided it’s time to end it. They say it’s foolhardy to wait more than 40 years between albums, so we’ve recorded a follow-up to “The Visitors”. To tell the truth, the main inspiration to record again comes from our involvement in creating the strangest and most spectacular concert you could ever dream of. We’re going to be able to sit back in an audience and watch our digital selves perform our songs on a stage in a custom-built arena in London next spring. Weird and wonderful!

To all of you who patiently have followed us in some way or another these past decades:

Thank you for waiting – it’s time for a new journey to begin.

“We simply call it “Voyage” and we’re truly sailing in uncharted waters. With the help of our younger selves, we travel into the future. It’s not easy to explain but then it hasn’t been done before.”

“It’s hard to say what’s been the most joyful thing for me ( Benny ) with this project. If it’s the involvement in creating the concert together with everyone or being back in the studio together again after 40 years. I think hearing Frida and Agnetha singing again is hard to beat. When you come to the arena you will have the four of us together with an absolutely glorious 10-piece band. And even if not in the flesh, we will be right there, thanks to the work of the creative team and ILM.”

“Those first sessions back in 2018 were such fun and when Benny called and asked if I’d ( Anni-Frid ) consider singing some more I jumped at it! And what songs!! My respect and love go out to these exceptionally talented, truly genius songwriters! Such joy it was to work with the group again. I am so happy with what we have made, and I dearly hope our fans feel the same.”

“When we got back together in the studio I ( Agnetha) had no idea what to expect…But Benny’s recording studio is such a friendly and safe environment, and before I knew it I was really enjoying myself! I can hardly believe that finally, the moment has come to share this with the world!”

“They’re such amazing singers those two, I ( Björn) was completely floored by the way they delivered those songs. They’re true musicians; totally unimpressed by pop star glamour but still having a great time being creative in a recording studio. The “Voyage” project has injected new life into us in more ways than one.”

“So, again, thanks for waiting! We hope to see you in the “ABBA Arena” and yes – see – because we have infused a good deal of our souls into those avatars. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we’re back.”

Agnetha, Björn, Benny, Anni-Frid

Stockholm, Sweden, 2nd September 2021

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Benny, Björn and Frida drop in for first anniversary of London’s Abba Voyage

Show in which youthful digital avatars of the group perform on stage has sold more than 1.3m tickets

On stage, digital technology gave the 3,000-strong audience at the Abba arena in east London perfectly recreated youthful versions of Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid.

At the rear of the purpose-built auditorium, three of the legendary group, now in their 70s, appeared in real life, waving like the pop royalty they are. The crowd was in ecstatic meltdown.

Benny Anderson, Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad were at the arena on Saturday evening to celebrate the first anniversary of the phenomenally successful show, Abba Voyage, featuring avatar versions of the band members.

More than 1.3m tickets have been sold to date, and the show has been extended to run at its London venue until May 2024. There are reports of a world tour , and Ulvaeus has suggested that replicas of the purpose-built arena could be constructed in Asia, Australia and North America.

For Kim Smith, who had travelled from Portsmouth to see the show with her daughter Lucy as a 62nd birthday treat, it was an emotional experience. “It took me back 40 years,” she said. “I was so overwhelmed that I cried.”

Abba Voyage opened a year ago to five-star reviews. “The effect is genuinely jaw-dropping … it’s almost impossible to tell you’re not watching human beings,” the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis wrote . Others described it as incredible, spectacular, dazzling and epic.

It took seven years and $175m to develop the technology and build the arena near the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. The four members of the band spent a month in motion-capture suits and helmets to help create the avatars – or Abbatars – that now “perform” seven times a week while their human counterparts can put their feet up.

“It was meticulously prepared, enormously expensive and incredibly difficult to create believable digital people,” said Svana Gisla, a producer of Abba Voyage. “But the result is magical.”

The avatars created by the visual effects masters Industrial Light & Magic had to “blend with the physical world”, including a 10-piece live band, said Gisla. “The join needed to be invisible. It needed to become one unit.

“Technology is the vehicle, but the audience shouldn’t feel the technology. We only got into the arena six weeks before the show opened, and at that point we couldn’t be sure it was going to work.”

The 90-minute show is the same for every performance, unlike a live gig where artists can mix up the numbers they perform or tailor their chats to the audience. But, said Gisla, the live band – which has its own spotlight mid-show – and the audience make each show unique.

The fans come in wigs, sequins and shiny catsuits, some as old or older than Abba, others born long after the band’s last live performance in 1982. The 350 shows since the opening on 27 May last year have attracted people from more than 140 countries.

Brendan Wagner and Steven Aney had come from Brisbane and Melbourne respectively to meet up with old friends Sophie Doherty and Jen Woods for Saturday’s matinee. They described it as “amazing, fantastic” with even the textures of the avatar’s spectacular costumes “completely believable”.

Up to 200 staff – 75% recruited in the local area – work on each performance, including those whose role includes enforcing the ban on photographs and video.

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“It’s lovely when people put their phones in their pockets and are there in the moment. It’s very rare to be at a concert where people are just dancing and singing, and not spending 80% of their time filming other people,” said Gisla.

Last week, Abba ruled out a reunion for next year’s Eurovision in Stockholm, which will be 50 years after the band’s performance of Waterloo won the competition. They have previously reportedly turned down the offer of $1bn to reunite. “We can celebrate 50 years of Abba without us being on stage,” Ulvaeus told the BBC .

Neither can their avatars perform outside the bespoke arena. “We joke that they don’t do special appearances, award ceremonies or barmitzvahs, because they can’t,” said Gisla.

Other performers and promoters have watched the pioneering show’s extraordinary success, with some inevitably pondering their own futures on stage.

“Good luck to them,” said Gisla. “It’s very expensive at the moment, and technology moves very quickly, especially AI driven technology, which is probably further along than we even imagine. But the technology isn’t enough. There is also an emotional experience in the arena.”

Ludvig Anderssen, another producer on the show, attributed that to the blurring of “the borderline between real and fantasy worlds. It triggers feelings about youth, ageing, mortality and immortality”.

Avatars would not replace live performance, Gisla said. “Musicians need to perform and audiences want to see performances, that’s never going to die. That’s an art form that has been alive for thousands of years. That’s the human connection that we need in life, and this is just another form of entertainment.”

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ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus on the future of the ‘Voyage’ live show and if they’d ever play Glastonbury

Björn Ulvaeus tells NME about what the future has in store for the ambitious live experience after entertaining one million people, and if we'll ever hear new music from the band

ABBA have welcomed the one millionth visitor to their Voyage show , with Björn Ulvaeus telling NME about what the future has in store for the ambitious live experience. Watch our video interview with Ulvaeus above.

• READ MORE: ABBA Voyage live in London: an epic avatar mega-mix from a brave new world

Last night (Monday April 17) saw young ABBA fan Josie Felix chosen as the winner to the one millionth visitor to see the show at the purpose-built ABBA Arena in London. She had been selected from scores of competition entries for writing her own song about how her dad would play ABBA on the school run when she was a child.

After their meeting, Ulvaeus sat down with NME to reflect on the show’s success.

“It’s amazing – it has surpassed any dream I could have ever had,” he said of reaching the milestone of entertaining one million people in less than a year since the Voyage first opened. “We’ve somehow reached new generations by some miracle. I don’t know how, but there you are. [2008 musical movie] Mamma Mia , I suppose played a role in that. There are new generations coming along.”

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The show sees CGI reincarnations (or ‘ABBA-tars’) based on the movements and performance of the living Swedish pop legends. These are then painstakingly presented to appear to be playing live with the appearance of the band in their ’70s prime, backed by a full live band present in the room.

The success of Voyage has kicked off a debate about which artists could adopt the format next, with members of the Sex Pistols and Spice Girls responding to the call .

“That feels good – to be in the front line of technology,” said Ulvaeus of the conversation the band have started, “but technology is just one part of it. There are so many other moving parts. Sometimes there’s talent, there’s good songs, there’s all of that behind it – but there’s also luck. You have to be lucky when something works as well as this, as well as having the resources artistically, financially and so forth.”

He continued: “We don’t know exactly what it is that we’ve done, which makes it hard to replicate. I don’t know it’s just for another band to do the same thing and expect the same kind of emotional effect that this has had. Not automatically – it’s not that easy.”

The ABBA Voyage virtual concert series is currently set to run in London into 2024 , with plans reported for the experience to be taken on a world tour.

Asked about what the future of the show involves, Ulvaeus replied: “We hope to stay in this venue for as long as we can. We hope they’ll have us for many years, and we might build other replicas of this in other places: Asia, Australia, North America. There are lots and promoters and cities that we’re talking to at the moment about that.

“Each one would take at least two years to build, but there will be announcements towards the end of this year or the beginning of next about where we actually are going. That’s if we’re going somewhere, which we will.”

And what about Glastonbury ? Is there the potential to do a mobile version of ABBA Voyage that could pop up at Worthy Farm?

“I don’t think that’s possible, yet,” he replied. “It might be in the future. As it is, it’s too complicated because the lighting, the sound, the visuals, everything is integrated and it’s so complicated.”

While the setlist for ABBA Voyage has remained the same since it first opened, Ulvaeus revealed to NME that they did work on more songs that could work their way into future iterations of the show. “We did motion capture more songs that we have in this concert,” he said. “There are songs in the pipeline which might be animated and ‘ABBA-tarred’ in the future. Who knows? There might be a new song every now and then somewhere – but I can’t give you any details as of right now.”

• READ MORE:  The story of ABBA in 15 classic songs

The last new music from band came on the 2021 accompanying ‘Voyage’ album containing the two recent singles ‘I Still Have Faith In You’ and ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’. Asked if there was a hope for more new music from the band to come, Ulvaeus said “No, ‘Voyage’ the album was the last you’ll ever hear from us” – but he did remain open to the idea of the band returning for more projects like the live show, making the most of new emerging technologies.

“There will be new exciting formats in the future that we know very little about right now,” he added. “AI, the metaverse, there are lots of interesting and exciting things happening creatively that ABBA might be involved in as well.”

Speaking to  NME  at the premiere, the show’s producer Svana Gisla and guitarist Dom John  shed light on the future of  Voyage . When asked if Voyage could be the last the world sees of ABBA, Gisla said: “I think this is the final thing. They’re quite genuine in that, but they’ve said that before. I think this is it. It took a lot to make and it was hard work, from us and from them.”

Meanwhile, John said he could see the show going on for “multiple years, maybe” when asked how long he expected to be performing as part of the show.

ABBA Voyage currently has dates listed until January 2024. Visit here for tickets and more information.

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Blondie, ABBA enter the National Recording Registry

Notorious b.i.g.’s ‘ready to die’ from ’94 also inducted.

LOS ANGELES — ABBA, Biggie, Blondie and Rudolph are entering America’s audio canon.

New inductees into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress include ABBA’s 1976 album “Arrival,” The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1994 album “Ready to Die,” Blondie’s 1978 breakthrough “Parallel Lines” and Gene Autry’s 1949 version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced the 25 new titles in the class of 2024 on Tuesday, saying in a statement that they are “worthy of preservation for all time based on their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage.”

Puerto Rican singer Héctor Lavoe’s signature song, 1978’s “El Cantante,” written by Ruben Blades, will enter the registry, along with Mexican singer Juan Gabriel’s tribute to his mother, “Amor Eterno.” The library is enshrining a 1990 recording of the song first released in 1984.

Other titles deemed to be among “the defining sounds of the nation’s history and culture” are Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 album “Surrealistic Pillow,” Green Day ‘s 1994 album “Dookie” and The Chicks ‘ 1998 “Wide Open Spaces,” the most recording among the new inductees.

Lily Tomlin’s 1971 album of sketches “This Is a Recording” is the only comedy and the only non-musical recording on this year’s list.

Autry, the singing cowboy who was among America’s biggest stars in the mid-20th century, recorded the definitive version of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Last year a newer holiday perennial, Mariah Carey’s, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” joined the registry, which now has 650 titles.

“Arrival” was the disco-tinged fourth album from the Swedish supergroup ABBA, and included their hits “Dancing Queen,” “Money, Money, Money” and “Fernando.”

Blondie and singer Debbie Harry had their commercial breakthrough with “Parallel Lines,” an album with a famous striped black-and-white cover that featured “Heart of Glass.” It’s joined this year by another new wave classic from the same year, the self-titled debut album by the Cars.

The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1994 album “Ready to Die” featuring “Juicy” and “Big Poppa,” the only album released during his life, headlines hip-hop entries that also include “La-Di-Da-Di” — Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s 1985 single.

“Rocket ‘88’” by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, the 1951 single that some argue was the first rock ‘n’ roll song, is also on the list.

Career-defining singles from several canonical artists are also entering the registry, including “Chances Are,” from Johnny Mathis, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” from Bobby McFerrin,” “The Tennessee Waltz” from Patti Page and “Ain’t No Sunshine” from Bill Withers.

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