How one of the biggest pop groups in the world secretly reunited to make a new album and a high-tech stage show featuring digital avatars of themselves — from 1979, writes Elisabeth Vincentelli of The New York Times.
STOCKHOLM — The small, tranquil island of Skeppsholmen holds a handful of the Swedish capital’s artistic treasures: Moderna Museet, the theater group Teater Galeasen and the converted red brick warehouse just steps from a waterfront promenade where Benny Andersson has his personal studio. He tucked a packet of the oral tobacco snus in his mouth as Bjorn Ulvaeus sipped coffee in one of its sunbathed rooms earlier this month, the two musicians surrounded by a grand piano, a small selection of synths and an assortment of framed photographs that were perched behind a computer screen.
For the first time since the Reagan administration, the pair were discussing a new album by their band, Abba — an album one of the biggest international pop acts in history somehow made in secret, with all four of its original members congregating nearly four decades after giving their last public performance.
“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 in September. The response was thunderous. “Abba is another vessel, isn’t it?” Ulvaeus marveled at the studio, just steps from the larger one where they completed their clandestine LP. “We did this thing and we are on the front page of every paper in the world.”
Starting in a custom-built London venue next May, the group will perform as highly sophisticated avatars (or in this case, Abbatars) designed to replicate their 1979 look — the era of feathered hair and flamboyant stage wear.
Andersson and Ulvaeus decided that the Abbatars should have some fresh material because that’s what would have happened before a tour back in the day. In 2017 Agnetha Faltskog, who lives outside Stockholm, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who lives in Switzerland, traveled to RMV studio, a hundred yards from Andersson’s base on Skeppsholmen. There, they put down their vocals on the ballad “I Still Have Faith in You” and the string-laden disco of “Don’t Shut Me Down.” The two singers, who have been out of the music business for several years, picked up right where they left off.
“They come in and they just, you know, ‘Here you go guys, we can still do this,’” Andersson said. “Amazing.”