Names and faces
■ ABBA is releasing its first new music in four decades, along with a concert performance that will see the “Dancing Queen” quartet going digital. The album “Voyage,” to be released Nov. 5, features the new songs “I Still Have Faith In You” and “Don’t Shut Me Down.” And a virtual version of the band will begin a series of concerts in London in May. “We took a break in the spring of 1982, and now we’ve decided it’s time to end it,” ABBA said. “They say it’s foolhardy to wait more than 40 years between albums, so we’ve recorded a follow-up to ‘The Visitors.’” The group has been creating the live show with George Lucas’ special-effects company, Industrial Light & Magic. They say the virtual versions of themselves are “weird and wonderful,” and go beyond holograms. “It was suggested to us that we could go on tour as a hologram. And this is now four, five years ago,” said Bjorn Ulvaeus. “And we found out very soon that that wasn’t even possible...but I mean, the vision was there of having our digital selves, that even was a possibility.” “And also,” said Benny Andersson, 74, “we want to do it before we were dead.” “We dressed up in leotards with dots or little things on them,” Ulvaeus said. “And we had dots in our faces and helmets with cameras. And there we were, the four of us on stage together doing these songs.” They say it was hard work but a great pleasure, but for one thing: “I’d say the only big problem was that we had to shave our beards,” Andersson said. “I’ve had my beard for 50 years.”
■ Michelle Obama and The Poor People’s Campaign have been chosen to receive the National Civil Rights Museum’s annual Freedom Awards. The museum said the former first lady and the campaign’s two leaders, the Rev. William Barber and the Rev. Liz Theoharis, will be honored in a virtual ceremony Oct. 14. The Memphis museum is on the grounds of the former Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot in 1968. Obama is a lawyer and writer who became the first Black first lady when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. She has been an advocate for healthy families, service members, higher education and international adolescent girls’ education.