Are you hoping for some uplifting news to get you through 2020? Well, here’s something to look forward to in 2021: ABBA is making a comeback! According to Geoff Lloyd, co-host of the “Reasons to Be Cheerful” podcast, who recently interviewed band member Björn Ulvaeus, ABBA will release five new songs in 2021. The band will also hold a hologram tour, appropriately called the ABBAtar tour.
If you are not familiar with the Swedish pop supergroup, take a chance on me, and I think you’ll be delighted. For those who have loved and missed the band, mamma mia, this is exciting.
In 1969, musicians Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson met singers Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. Not only did the foursome pair off into couples (Fältskog and Ulvaeus wed in 1971, Lyngstad and Andersson in 1978), they also formed a musical group using the letters of their first names. In 1972, ABBA topped the charts in Sweden.
By the mid-1970s, the band was one of the most popular musical groups in the world. Singles such as “Waterloo,” “Dancing Queen” and “Fernando” gained ABBA fans in the U.S., Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
In 1980, the group jumped on the music video bandwagon with their video for their song “The Winner Takes It All,” a clip of which is included in this tweet from the ABBA Twitter account.
Today in 1980, ABBA film the video for 'The Winner Takes It All' in the town of Marstrand on Sweden's west coast.
#ABBA pic.twitter.com/8vczktwdKy
— ABBA (@ABBA) July 12, 2020
However, by the early ’80s, ABBA was running out of steam. Both couples had divorced, and the group decided to take a break.
Decades later, the break that fans thought was temporary has continued. In 2019, Björn Ulvaeus told Smooth Radio that while the band had announced they were working on new material and two new songs were “in the can,” the tracks wouldn’t be released until 2020.
The two new songs so far are titled “I Still Have Faith In You” and “Don’t Shut Me Down,” and Ulvaeus promises that the band hasn’t lost that classic ABBA sound.
“It’s slightly lower now because everyone [has dropped] in range,” Ulvaeus told Smooth Radio. “But the sound is the same and yeah, it’s going to sound like ABBA, definitely. One of the songs is more timeless, not of a certain style. The other one is perhaps a little nod to the ’70s, but with modern-sounding instruments.”
Now, the release of these two songs — plus three more — has been pushed to 2021, when we can also expect the band’s hologram tour, which will apparently showcase the band as their younger selves.
“They photographed us from all possible angles, they made us grimace in front of cameras, they painted dots on our faces, they measured our heads,” Ulvaeus said, according to Deadline. “Apparently, a cranium doesn’t change with age the way the rest of your body falls apart.”
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