MAMMA MIA! LOOK WHO’S BACK AGAIN
Now in their seventies, Abba return with their first new material for 40 years – and high-tech versions of their younger selves
This is the mother of all pop reunions. It’s bigger than Take That in 2005, because Abba are the greater band. It’s bigger even than The Beatles in 1995, because that was just two singles.
When Abba’s ninth album, Voyage, arrives on November 5, it will be 40 years to the month since their last one – surely a new world record for the longest hiatus from a leading band. They have put the Abba in sabbatical.
One of their singers, Frida Lyngstad, 75, spent some of her time off in an unusual role for a pop princess: she became an actual princess after marrying a Prussian prince.
Not that the Abba saga needed another subplot. Everyone in this band is divorced from someone else. It’s impressive that they’re on speaking terms, never mind singing.
The central relationship in the band is the one between Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson.
They have gone all the way from writing folk songs together in 1966 to planning the high-tech show that will open in London in May 2022, with Abba appearing as digital versions of their younger selves.
As the two men stood waiting to talk to Zoe Ball at Thursday’s press conference, it was fascinating to observe them. They listened impassively to Ball’s starstruck introduction, until Björn leant over and murmured something in Benny’s ear which made them both laugh.
Then, as Ball reeled off some of the cities to which the event was being relayed, the smiles turned to frowns. Had she left out Stockholm?
In some ways Benny and Björn are alike – both bearded, professorial and speaking fluent English while remaining decidedly Swedish. I interviewed them once and found that they were the most down-to-earth legends you could wish to meet.
In other ways they’re quite different. Björn, like many pop stars, is skinny, twitchy, all nervous energy. With his lush brown hair and tight trousers, he looks younger than his 76 years. Benny, 74, couldn’t be less like a pop star. Calm and cuddly, he’s not bothered about how he looks and has a silver mullet to prove it.
The first question is not whether the new music is good, but whether it’s characteristic. Do they still sound like Abba? Absolutely. I Still Have Faith In You couldn’t be anyone else. It’s simple but subtle, fresh but familiar, shiny but soulful. Here they glow again.
Frida’s vocal, with harmonies
from Agnetha Fältskog, 71, is lovely. But the real magic is in Benny Andersson’s melody. Something in the way he writes attracts us like no current pop composer. It’s the blend of sadness and joy, the warmth of the instruments. Strings, horns, goosebumps.
The lyrics, by Björn Ulvaeus, are very Abba too – heartfelt, cheesy, sometimes clunky – but with a twist. They don’t just mark Abba’s comeback, they discuss it. ‘When Benny played the melody,’ Björn says, ‘I knew it had to be about us.’
It works as the tale of an individual relationship, with decades of experience built into that ‘still’. But this is also Abba’s own story, which is like no other. It finds the universal in the particular, the way great songs do.
The other new track, Don’t Shut Me Down, is almost as good. A breezy disco-pop song, it’s a different take on the subject of old flames. This time, it’s sexual – in a dignified way. And it delivers one of their trademarks: the gleeful piano glissando. The song was playing as Benny and Björn left the press conference. Benny, knowing what was coming, stopped, held up both hands, heard his own glissando and did a little jig.
For information on tickets, go to abbavoyage.com