ABBA returns as digital ‘ABBAtars’ for London arena residency from May 2022
Whether or not it’s worth paying a premium fee to watch a bunch of holograms do the same thing night in, night out depends on how deep your love for ABBA runs.
For a group that has made a bigger impact on pop music than just about any other, it seems fitting that the return of Swedish quartet ABBA after 39 years coincided with an addition to the colloquial English lexicon: “ABBAtar”.
These avatars, rather than the actual humans, are what legions of fans will be laying down their money to see from May 2022 onwards at a custom-built “ABBA Arena” in East London.
The avatars will be hologram-like representations the four members, frozen in the digital amber of their early 30s, as they were when the group began its long hiatus.
The live-streamed announcement at 3.00am Friday (AEST) – which coincided with these relatively youthful “ABBAtars” being projected onto global landmarks including a Sydney Harbour Bridge pylon – contained several fascinating nuggets to chew on.
Among them was the release of the quartet’s first new music since 1982 in the shape of two songs: the mawkish ballad I Still Have Faith in You, whose nostalgic lyrics could be read as self-directed (Do I have it in me? / I believe it is in there / For I know I hear a bittersweet song / In the memories we share…”).
As well, there’s the more upbeat and conventional pop single Don’t Shut Me Down. These two songs will be followed by a 10-track album titled Voyage on November 5, in what will be the group’s ninth studio collection.
The new songs are enjoyable enough on their own merits, but the weight of history mean they will be held up and judged against the likes of Dancing Queen, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!, Waterloo and Mamma Mia.
For many, compositions like these form the bedrock soundtrack of their youths, their adulthood, even their lives.
So do these new tracks stack up? Not really. Or at least not yet.
By the time you read this, they’ve barely been let loose in the atmosphere for 24 hours. Information and opinion moves at a lightning pace today, especially when compared to 1982.
Classics take time to ferment and calcify within the collective cultural memory. They may yet become those.
But the real eye-opener within Friday’s announcement was the “ABBAtar” technology, and the reveal that a state-of-the-art 3000 capacity arena is being constructed at London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
The show is set to open on May 27, 2022, with the four digital versions of the ABBA members – Agnetha Faltskog (now 71), Bjorn Ulvaeus (76), Benny Andersson (74) and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (75) – performing alongside a live 10-piece band.
An 850-strong team from Industrial Light & Magic, the US visual effects company founded by Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas, has partnered with the Swedish group for its first foray into music.
Based on the available evidence – which appears in the final 90 seconds of the music video for I Still Have Faith In You – the results could be something very special indeed.
Created using motion capture technology and based on their actual performances, the digital visages of the four band members are mightily impressive, at least in short form.
Whether or not it’s worth paying a premium fee to watch a bunch of holograms do the same thing night in, night out – while backed by a band of live musicians – depends on how deep your love for ABBA runs.
If you reckon they’re just about the most naff thing to have ever topped the pop charts, then you have probably already rolled your eyes half a dozen times while reading this.
But if you’re a fan who was there when those timeless songs were first released, or even when the group’s music underwent a chart resurgence following the success of the 1999 jukebox musical Mamma Mia!, you might have already logged onto the band’s website to register for tickets ahead of Tuesday’s launch.
After enduring the two-year pandemic slog of lockdowns and flattened horizons, Abba in London in the northern spring sounds pretty bloody good, doesn’t it?
More Coverage
