TOPLINE ABBA is releasing their first album of new material in 40 years, the Swedish pop legends announced Thursday, and will be featured in live shows—through holographic likenesses—in 2022.
KEY FACTS
The new album, titled Voyage, will go on sale November 5, the Associated Press reported.
The band began recording the songs in 2018, about 35 years after they split up.
The live shows, in London, will be performed by holographic avatars recreating the singers as they appeared in the decade the band was active, the BBC reported.
The shows will begin May 27 and will be backed by a live band.
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CRUCIAL QUOTE
“We took a break in the spring of 1982 and now we’ve decided it’s time to end it,” the group said in a statement. “They say it’s foolhardy to wait more than 40 years between albums, so we’ve recorded a follow-up to ‘The Visitors.’”
BIG NUMBER
385 million. That’s how many albums the band was estimated to have sold by 2018.
KEY BACKGROUND
Formed in 1972 by two couples who later named the group after their initials, ABBA released 11 albums and won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest before disbanding in 1982—before which both pairs divorced—according to the group’s website. Despite nearly four decades of not touring or producing new material, the band has remained popular, selling hundreds of millions of albums. Theater and film adaptations have also kept their music in the public ear: In 1999, their songs were made into a musical, Mamma Mia!, which was in turn adapted into a movie and sequel in 2008 and 2018.
SURPRISING FACT
ABBA’s famously extravagant costumes were inspired in part by their home country’s tax system, according to Diane Coyle, a University of Cambridge economics professor. “In Swedish tax law you could write off the cost of your work clothing,” she told NPR in 2018, “but not clothing that you could wear in the street. So they made sure that what they wore onstage was something they wouldn’t dream of wearing in the street so they could use it to reduce their tax bills.”
FURTHER READING
ABBA back after 40 years with new album, virtual stage show (Associated Press)
New Exhibition Launched As ABBA Sells More Music Than Ever (Forbes)
By Graison Dangor, Forbes Staff
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