Mamma mia! Hear ABBA’s first two new songs in almost 40 years

All you Dancing Queens, pay attention up. 1970s Swedish pop group ABBA has reunited after almost 40 years with a brand new album, Voyage — and a deliberate live performance expertise that includes digital variations of the 4 musicians. Two of the brand new songs are already out there for listening, the album is coming in November, and the live performance sequence with the digital band will come to London in spring of 2022. Are you able to hear the drums, Fernando?

The 2 new songs, I Nonetheless Have Religion in You and Do not Shut Me Down, are available now on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon, Pandora and Tidal. The video for I Nonetheless Have Religion in You, which options nostalgic footage of the band over time, has earned over 1,000,000 views in three hours.

The total Voyage album is approaching Nov. 5 from Capitol Information and might be preordered now on vinyl, CD or cassette. Sure, cassette.

ABBA was shaped in 1972, and the group title comes from the letters of the 4 members’ first names: Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. According to Forbes, the group has bought greater than 385 million information, regardless of breaking apart in 1982.

“The primary tune, I Nonetheless Have Religion in You, when Benny performed the melody, I simply knew, it needed to be about us,” Ulvaeus says in a promotional video uploaded Thursday. “It is about realizing that it is inconceivable to be the place we’re. No creativeness might dream up that — to launch a brand new album after 40 years, and nonetheless be the very best of associates, and nonetheless be having fun with one another’s firm, and to have whole loyalty. Who has skilled that? No one.”

So many followers sought out the 2 new songs that the official on-line music retailer crashed, although it was working once I tried on Thursday afternoon.

“ABBA broke up a 12 months earlier than the web was invented and now they’re crashing it,” one Twitter person wrote. 

However what about these digital variations? The band is not calling them holograms, however digital characters, they usually’re computer-generated photos of how the 4 seemed in 1979. The precise band carried out each tune within the present whereas sporting motion-capture fits so their actions may very well be captured precisely (by 160 cameras, over 5 weeks).

The ABBA Voyage performances will start Could 27, 2022 at a custom-built, 3,000-capacity venue referred to as ABBA Area, in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. concert-goers can preregister on abbavoyage.com, and tickets will go on sale Sept. 7. A reside 10-piece band will carry out with the digital photos of ABBA.

Photos of ABBA within the colourful motion-capture fits getting used to provide their digital variations earned some enjoyable social response. 

“Me and the crew are lastly going to do the sleep apnea clinic,” wrote one Twitter person, referring to the band’s motion-capture fits, dotted with colourful markers.

Stated one other, “Why does ABBA appear to be they’re the VFX crew for Lord of the Rings?”

Others have been simply thrilled that the band is again. “I really feel like ABBA has returned as a result of they knew we would have liked them,” wrote one Twitter person.