“Voulez-Vous” some more ABBA music? Are you saying “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” right now? ABBA is making a comeback here in 2018, preparing to release new music for the first time in 35 years. And we’re so happy, we can’t stop making puns! (By the way, “Does Your Mother Know”?)
The news comes a year and a half after the Swedish pop quartet — which includes Benny Andersson, 71, Agnetha Fältskog, 68, Björn Ulvaeus, 73, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 72 — announced they would be reuniting for a live “entertainment experience” through virtual reality avatars. And that VR experience inspired the new music! “The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence,” the group said in a statement released on Friday, April 27. “We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did.”
Even after so many years apart, the band members bonded “The Way Old Friends Do” in the studio. “It was like time had stood still and that we only had been away on a short holiday,” they said. “An extremely joyful experience!”
In the statement, ABBA revealed their studio sessions resulted in two new songs, one of which — a track titled “I Still Have Faith in You” — will be performed by their avatars in an NBC-BBC co-production tentatively scheduled for December. “We may have come of age, but the song feels new,” the band said. “And it feels good.”
ABBA released eight studio albums between 1973 and 1981 and have sold an estimated 380 million albums. They split in 1982 after both couples in the group filed for divorce, but their legacy endured. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010; and their best-known hit, “Dancing Queen,” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015. Plus, their music inspired the 1999 musical Mamma Mia!, which in turn inspired a 2008 big-screen adaptation starring Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried… which in turn inspired a sequel due for release this July 20!
We’re so glad we don’t have to say “So Long” to ABBA. Even if they’re only releasing new songs for the “Money, Money, Money,” we’re still in a “Thank You For the Music” mindset!
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