It was never a gimme, gimme, gimme... but it’ll blow your mind
Abba Voyage Abba Arena, Olympic Park London ★★★★☆
I think I may have seen the future of pop … and it looks weirdly like its past. After 40 years, Abba returned to the stage, looking younger, more svelte and glamorous than they did when they broke up in 1982. In a multimedia CGI spectacular, the Swedish supergroup opened a residency at the purpose-built built Abba Arena in London’s Olympic Park with an entertainment extravaganza that had fans dancing in the aisles and giving a standing ovation to musicians who weren’t even on-stage.
Or were they? “To be or not to be, that is no longer the question,” said Benny Andersson, 75, but not looking a day over 30. “This is really me,” he insisted. “I actually look this good.” I’m not sure pop should be so existentially confusing, but fortunately you won’t need a degree in quantum physics to enjoy this state-of-the-art show.
Abba Voyage is billed as a “concert experience”, a 95-minute, 20-song set starring computer-generated versions of the four band members, backed by 10 live musicians. There has been a lot of emphasis on technology in the run-up to its launch, involving a thousand digital wizards from Industrial Light & Magic, utilising 160 cameras and a billion computing hours to create the so-called “Abba-tars”. The purpose-built 3,000-capacity venue contains 291 speakers, 500 moving lights, a 65-million pixel screen and “the largest kinetic system in the world”. But all that matters to fans is whether it looks, sounds and feels like an Abba show, not a theme park facsimile.
Well, it turns out it is something else, a mind-blowing hi-tech celebration of some of the greatest pop music ever made, delivered as if you are up close and personal with legends … albeit in a virtual spaceship in another dimension.
The king and queen of Sweden were two rows behind me dressed in the kind of royal regalia that made them look like hardcore fans. They even got on their feet for Dancing Queen, though I can’t confirm whether or not they pulled any fancy moves as I was distracted by the sight of Kylie Minogue and Sophie Ellis Bextor in states of religious epiphany. Jarvis Cocker watched with rapt interest, possibly considering what all this might mean for the employment prospects of working pop stars, while Keira Knightley seemed to be mainly focused on her musical husband James Righton of the Klaxons, band leader for a gifted young ensemble brilliantly recreating Abba’s arrangements.
The whole thing is an excuse to blast out the most uplifting pop ever made at bone-shaking volume. Although they start out with life-sized avatars manifested as if we were watching a real band at an actual gig, the show becomes increasingly fantastical, with giant versions of Agnetha Falkstog and Anna-frid Lyngstad towering over the audience, pulling the kind of athletic high kicks that should put women their age in traction.
There’s a cinematic sweep to the production that will have today’s pop superstars looking on with envy, though this would be impossible for any actual band to pull off.
What’s more impressive is that the show creates a genuine sense of personality and connection.
The actual living and breathing septuagenarian superstars appeared briefly at the end to bask in the applause, looking suddenly frail, slightly crumpled and manifestly real.
Or was that just a wrinkle in the multiverse? Abba Voyage is fantastic, and I highly recommend it. But it still makes me nervous. One day, if we’re not careful, all gigs will be like this.