Swedish pop quartet ABBA is set to release five new songs along with their “holographic tour” scheduled this year.
Mamma Mia, here we go again!
Swedish 70’s pop group ABBA is set to premiere new music along with their “holographic tour” this year.
The band is set to record five new songs to take on the long-delayed tour.
ABBA‘s Björn Ulvaeus has teased the band’s forthcoming avatar tour, promising that it “still sounds very much ABBA”.
The band will also hold a hologram tour, appropriately called the “ABBAtartour.”
Back in 2017, it was announced that the band would reunite in digital form in 2019, performing as “Abbatars” for the first time since they split in 1982.
When the reunion tour was then delayed, the Swedish pop icons announced back in 2018 that they would be sharing two new tracks: ‘I Still Have Faith In You’ and ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’, which was then expanded to five new tracks as a reward to fans waiting for the reunion tour due to Covid-related delays.
In a new interview with The Times, Ulvaeus discussed how Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad’s vocals were now in a lower pitch – “about one tone lower, perhaps” – but promised that the sound fans would hear on the tour would still be “very much ABBA.”
Discussing the process of creating the avatars, Ulvaeus said the band were “photographed from all possible angles” and made to “grimace in front of cameras”.
“They painted dots on our faces, they measured our heads,” he related.
Back in 2018, Ulvaeus spoke about the direction of the two original new songs, which has now been expanded to five.
“One of them is a pop tune, very danceable,” he said. “The other is more timeless, more reflective, that is all I will say. It is Nordic sad, but happy at the same time.”
Meanwhile, Ulvaeus slammed the streaming economy, saying that songwriters are “last in line for streaming royalties”.
Writing in The Guardian , Ulvaeus said a new royalties model is needed if the industry is to see any kind of “risk-taking” or “creativity” from artists whose writing, he says, is being affected by the pressures of the “dysfunctional” current model. (NP)
Tags: #music, #ABBA, #holographictour, #ABBAtarTour