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The First New ABBA Album in 40 Years Was Worth the Wait

By Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield

Nearly 40 years ago, Abba were in the studio for one last time, to cut a tragic ballad called “The Day Before You Came.” They knew this was goodbye; both couples in the group had finalized their divorces. Agnetha Fältskog recited a bleak tale of total emotional isolation, words scripted by her ex-husband, doing her vocals in a darkened studio with all the lights out. It was the last thing they ever recorded. A splendidly melodramatic finale for this most melodramatic of pop groups. And that—as far as the world knew—was that for Abba. Until now.

So how the hell did this happen? The Swedish super troupers ride again with Voyage , and there’s never been a comeback story like this one: all four original members of a great pop band, reuniting after 40 years apart, with all their powers intact. This album would be a one-of-a-kind historic event even if the songs blew—but it’s vintage Abba, on par with their classic 1970s run. It evokes the days when the Norse gods ruled the radio, combining two of the Seventies’ hottest trends: heartbreak and sequin-studded pantsuits. 

For Bjorn, Benny, Anna-Frid and Agnetha, their last album was the 1981 gem The Visitors , a frosty electro concept album of synth-pop paranoia and mid-life despair. Their tunes were as cheery and bouncy on the surface as prime Elton John, making them the world’s best-selling act, but loaded with Leonard Cohen levels of angst. Who else would put a song called “Disillusion” on their first album? 

But since then, the Abba legacy has just kept booming. Each generation falls in love with their hits all over again. They helped invent goth—you can’t imagine Joy Division or the Cure or Berlin-era Bowie without “S.O.S.” They taught Kurt Cobain how to write hooks. If the pop-star scale goes from “obscure” to “legendary,” Abba zoom right off the chart and land on “Cher tribute album, right after the scene in * Mamma Mia 2 * where she steps out of a helicopter to belt ‘Fernando.’”

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Voyage piles on the tragic drama—it’s a whole album of “The Winner Takes It All,” without any “Mamma Mia” or “Take a Chance On Me.” They were always in love with adult gloom, going back to the divorced-mom power chords of “Knowing Me, Knowing You” or “Hey Hey Helen.” As Pete Townshend told Rolling Ston e in 1982, when he shocked the world by coming out as an Abba fan, “Abba was one of the first big international bands to actually deal with sort of middle-aged problems in their songwriting.” And that was in their younger days. Now that they’re all past 70, they haven’t exactly lost their appetite for emotional-crisis soundtracks. 

As always, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson write the songs, but now they leave the singing to the ladies, Faltskog and Anna-Frid Lyngstad. They put Voyage together while plotting their 2022 “virtual” live residency in London. These concerts won’t have mere holograms—instead, they’ve got what Benny and Bjorn call “Abba-tars.” 

“Don’t Shut Me Down” is the prize of the new tunes: Agnetha prowls outside her ex’s home, waiting for the right moment to knock on his door for the first time in years and seduce him. It’s a completely over-the-top scenario—just Abba’s specialty—in the style of their Seventies disco bangers, complete with “Dancing Queen” piano frills. Agnetha takes satisfaction in noticing that her ex hasn’t redecorated since she left, because “These rooms were witness to our love / My tantrums and increasing frustration.” (Could there be a more Abba lyric? No, there could not.)

“No Doubt About It” goes for Eighties synth glitz, while “Just a Notion” is a frisky Seventies leftover—a Voulez Vous outtake with vocals recorded in 1978. The fact that vocal tracks from four decades ago fit seamlessly with the new ones—it’s a tribute to Abba’s obsessive machine-tooled precision. “I Could Be That Woman” is a lavish ballad where a woman watches her estranged lover cuddle someone named Tammy—it turns out to be his dog. The couple argues (“You say you’ve had it and you say ‘screw you’”), while the dog watches and judges them. The dog might be the most emotionally stable character on the album. But like all the couples in these songs, this one has a long, tortured history with no happy ending in sight. You can’t say Abba don’t stay true to their vision.

It wouldn’t be an authentic Abba album without some stomach-churning filler, so beware before you brave the Christmas ditty “Little Things.” But otherwise, Voyage reflects how far these four have traveled, musically and emotionally. There’s no embarrassing attempt to get up to date with the bops the kids are into these days, a compliment to their integrity. Instead of chasing trends, they stick to the classic sound they perfected years ago, the sound that has kept influencing modern pop ever since. As they once sang, the history book on the shelf is always repeating itself.

When the woman in “Don’t Shut Me Down” knocks on that guy’s door, her greeting is, “I would believe it’s fair to say you look bewildered.” And indeed, it’s a surprise to have these Swedes back in the game. But it’s a bigger, sweeter surprise that they returned so full of musical vitality. All these years after “Waterloo,” Abba still refuse to surrender.

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ABBA’s ‘Voyage’ CGI Extravaganza Is Everything It’s Cracked Up to Be, and More: ‘Concert’ Review

By Mark Sutherland

Mark Sutherland

  • The Last Dinner Party Proves It’s for Real at Dazzling London Show: Concert Review 4 weeks ago
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ABBA Voyage

“To be or not to be, that is no longer the question,” declared ABBA co-founder and musical mastermind Benny Andersson at the start of “ABBA Voyage,” the Swedish quartet’s first “concert” in over 40 years. And if that sounds like a curiously existential way to begin a pop concert, well, this is no ordinary live show.

For a start, despite Andersson’s insistence that “This is really me, I just look very good for my age,” it’s actually his de-aged, computer-generated avatar — or “ABBA-tar,” if you must — that is speaking his pre-recorded words. Alongside him are the similarly CGI-rendered forms of his bandmates, all looking as they did — or, in truth, actually somewhat better than — they did in their ‘70s heyday.

Meet, then, the prefab four, playing a show that is billed, 100% accurately, as “a concert like no other” — which doesn’t mean it isn’t every bit as big a deal as it would have been had ABBA reformed for a more traditional concert.

Staged in the purpose-built ABBA Arena near East London’s Olympic Park, the world premiere performance nonetheless attracted royalty of both the showbiz world (Kylie Minogue, Keira Knightley, Kate Moss) and actual sovereign variety: the King and (dancing) Queen of Sweden walked the red carpet in support of one of their nation’s leading exports.

However, it was the presence of all four real-life members of ABBA — Andersson, co-founder and co-mastermind Björn Ulvaeus, and lead singers Anni-Frid Lyngstad and the usually reclusive Agnetha Fältskog — that caused the real stir, proof of the demand fueling this technologically ground-breaking (and presumably wildly expensive) new concept in entertainment. ( Andersson and Ulvaeus spoke with Variety about the shows last year and earlier this week.)

The stakes, therefore, are high. If there are nerves, however, these ice-cool Swedes — and their similarly unflappable producers, Svana Gisla and Ludvig Andersson — don’t show them. And, as it turns out, there was little need to worry.

True, as the digital foursome emerge from the floor — like Doctor Who’s Tardis, the arena appears bigger on the inside, appropriate for tonight’s adventures in time and space — the spectre of “Rock Circus,” a spectacularly naff animatronic Madame Tussauds attraction that ran in London throughout the ‘90s, hung in the air.

At first, the movements seem a little too jerky, the lines a little too obvious. But then, just as when you saw the initially-somewhat-unconvincing dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park” for the first time, your eyes adjust, the willing suspension of disbelief kicks in, and they begin to feel like living, breathing musicians, rather than the product of 160 motion capture cameras and one billion computing hours by Industrial Light & Magic.

Certainly, the crowd has no problem giving these computer programs a round of applause, a standing ovation or a shrieked declaration of undying love. This, after all, is their chance to witness something most of them had never seen before, and all of them thought they’d never see again – some of the greatest pop songs of all time delivered, at least tangentially, by the original protagonists.

And these avatars certainly capture ABBA’s original exuberance, minus the Jurassic tendencies that tend to blight decades-after-the-fact reunions in the real world. The pre-publicity stressed these weren’t holograms, and that’s true — these digital doppelgangers look almost indistinguishable from real people from every angle, with each tuft of hair and outlandish ‘70s costume rendered in occasionally terrifying detail. They can dance, they can jive, they can even make bad jokes about pausing for costume changes — and the crowd are having the time of their lives, teetering on the brink of delirium throughout, despite their majority VIP status.

But then these songs tend to do that to people. After a slow-ish start with the lesser-known songs “The Visitors” and “Hole in Your Soul,” the set delivers the hits just like any ABBA tribute act. However, some notable classics, from “Super Trouper” to “Money, Money, Money” and “Take a Chance on Me,” are absent — smart money is surely on versions of these already being in the can for future setlist tweaks. But any quibbles are drowned out by a youthful, 10 piece live band — put together by Keira Knightley’s husband, James Righton, formerly of “new rave” sensations the Klaxons — that means “S.O.S” and “Does Your Mother Know?” have rarely sounded so punchy.

ABBA VOYAGE

Meanwhile, the accompanying visuals are out of this world: extravagant light effects, interstellar backdrops and CGI Tron costumes mean that, in the unlikely event you are underwhelmed by splendid versions of “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and “Voulez-Vous,” there’s always something to look at.

The budget doesn’t seem to have quite extended to a full avatar show — there are some bizarre, animated interludes, possibly designed to boost the bar takings, while “Waterloo” simply features joyous archive footage from the very beginning of the band’s journey into the public’s affections.

This “Voyage,” however, is ultimately about more high-tech pleasures. It succeeds so well that you would be surprised if other entertainment centers weren’t already queuing up to host the show (which is booked in London until at least this time next year), and if other groups with pan-generational fanbases and aging personnel weren’t already exploring something similar.

ABBA VOYAGE

By the time the closing salvo of “Dancing Queen,” “Thank You for the Music” and a genuinely emotional “The Winner Takes It All” arrived, the crowd was so immersed that a digital rendering of ABBA as they are now fools almost everyone into believing the real Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid are onstage — that is, until the four of them really did shuffle on a few seconds later.

After 90 minutes with their younger selves, it feels strange to see them like this – mostly grey-haired, Frida with a cane, all suddenly rendered mortal like the rest of us. But it perhaps makes sense of why they embarked on this ludicrously ambitious project, rather than simply getting the band back together.

We’ll sadly never know for sure, but maybe, just maybe, “ABBA Voyage” will turn out to be even better than the real thing..

View this post on Instagram A post shared by ABBA (@abba)

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Abba Voyage Review: No Ordinary Abba Night at the Club

With a concert spectacle mixing wizardry and technical skill, the band makes a case for its continued relevance.

the voyage abba

By Juan A. Ramírez

LONDON — I kept turning to my friend, wanting to tell him how young and fresh the two women that put the As in Abba seemed on the giant screens ahead of us. Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were not actually in the room with us, but that’s the kind of stupor Abba Voyage dazzles you into.

Though the Swedish pop band has not played London since 1979, holographic “Abbatars” of the band, modeled in their likeness from that year, are currently filling up a custom-built arena for a 90-minute concert of their greatest hits. A combination of motion-captured performance, animated sequences and a live 10-person band make up the spectacle, which makes a floor-thumping case for the music’s continued relevance.

Projected on a screen that envelops one side of the spaceshiplike auditorium, the Abbatars play mostly as if it were a real concert. They “enter” from below the stage, make banter with the audience, ask for patience as they switch costumes, and return for an encore.

It would feel corny if it weren’t so triumphantly fun, and the Friday night crowd was certainly along for the ride. Largely a mix of couples in their mid 60s and younger, disco-leaning gay men, the attendees sang through every number with the intensity of a therapeutic ritual. Abba Voyage is an exercise in symbol worship that separates itself from an ordinary Abba night at the club through state-of-the-art production values.

“To be or not to be — that is no longer the question,” the band member Benny Andersson declares in a prerecorded solo address, and questions about live performance, truth, eternity and transience are frothed up into the sheer giddiness of (almost) being in the same room as one of the biggest acts in pop music history.

It’s hard to pin down the reasons that such a strange, 21st century endeavor is a crowd-pleasing success, but Abba’s music has its own strange alchemy. Take “Mamma Mia” (performed here in rhinestone-emblazoned pink velour jumpsuits): Why is the hook an Italian catchphrase? Or “Fernando” (sung against a dramatic lunar eclipse): What could these four Swedes possibly have to say about the Mexican revolution? And yet, something about the earnestness of those songs, reflected in the audience’s full-chested belting, has made them inescapable pop standards.

Those two songs are performed straightforwardly, the Abbatars life-size and center stage, with surrounding screens projecting close-ups for those seated in the orchestra level, behind a massive dance floor. Most of the numbers are done this way, recreating a concert experience; the audience was overjoyed to dance along and applaud each step of the way. Choreography, based on the band member’s real movements, but captured from younger body doubles, hit its peak during “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!,” with the digital Lyngstad doing high-kicks and twirls that I’m not sure the real one was capable of in her heyday.

A couple of songs, however, played more like immersive music videos, with the full size of the screens used to tell more thorough visual stories. The band famously sang and performed through its own breakup, and “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” a 1977 anthem mirroring the dissolution of romantic and professional relations in the group, is here performed as an Ingmar Bergman-esque study in missed connections. Its members’ fractured faces sing across a hall of mirrors before ultimately embracing in reconciliation.

Less successful than those episodes were two fully-animated numbers, set to “Eagle” and “Voulez Vous,” following a young traveler’s journey through forests and pyramids, and culminating in their discovery of giant sculptures of the band member’s heads.

Those songs recreate the interstitial bits of a “real” concert, as do speeches from each Abbatar about their success and artistry. The best of these interludes saw the band present the footage from their Eurovision Song Contest-winning performance of “Waterloo,” the song that catapulted them to fame in 1974.

Abba’s music is deceptively complex. What sounds like a simple little song reveals itself to be an intricately layered web of harmonies, melodies, real and digital instruments and angelic English vocals, ever-so-slightly outside the band’s Scandinavian comfort zone.

It’s a mix of wizardry and technical skill that, decades later, after movies and musicals and greatest hits compilations, is still at the pinnacle of pop maximalism. To hear the closing piano riffs on “Chiquitita” in a crowded arena is an exalting experience, and despite its eyebrow-raising premise, Abba Voyage miraculously takes flight.

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ABBA Voyage

By Ben Cardew

Pop/R&B

November 5, 2021

Rarely has a reunion seemed as superfluous as ABBA ’s. In Europe and Australasia, 40 years after they first broke up, ABBA remain omnipotent, an ever-present part of the pop landscape, like guitar solos and interminable Coldplay album rollouts. The band’s legacy may have dimmed slightly in the 1980s, after their split at the start of the decade. But since the early 1990s—and particularly following the release of ABBA Gold in 1992—ABBA’s traces can be found in every nook and cranny of cultural life, from musicals to movies, Madonna to museums .

That means the stakes for the band’s comeback, with Voyage , are both impossibly high and curiously low. (As ABBA co-songwriter Benny Andersson recently told The New York Times , “What is there to prove? They’ll still play ‘Dancing Queen’ next year.”) ABBA could return with a song as irrationally perfect as 1975 hit “S.O.S.” and it still wouldn't resonate with the same lived-in emotional significance as the 19 songs on ABBA Gold . At the same time, as long as ABBA 2021 sound vaguely in line with the classically inspired, slightly nerdy Swedish pop overlords of popular memory, their recorded return will be loaves and fishes to their fans, who have already forked out in their thousands to watch digital avatars of Agnetha, Benny, Björn, and Anni-Frid prance around a London stage.

Much like the forthcoming digital residency, the band’s new album falls somewhere between the lure of nostalgia and the pull of the present day. Voyage is a mixture of songs, old and (mostly) new, that have all the glam boogie, scandi-disco bounce, and epic pop construction of the band’s revered catalog, with some tentative nods to the passing of time. They may have kept the music on Voyage “ absolutely trend-blind ” to modern pop production, but Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad's vocals have a slightly world-weary, aged tone to them, their vocal range a touch lower than in their pomp, while the album’s lyrics frequently speak of old times, faithful friends, and the demands of parenthood.

It feels almost rude to ask for anything more. Voyage is as richly harmonic, smartly constructed, and satisfying as you might expect of Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, two of the most talented songwriters in the history of pop music. “Keep an Eye on Dan,” “No Doubt About It,” and “Don’t Shut Me Down” are home to some of the best pop melodies of the year—vaguely unpredictable yet glaringly obvious once heard. They’re also fantastically arranged, with hooks piled on top of hooks, gently arranged on a bed of unusual musical choices, like the suggestion of reggae on “Don’t Shut Me Down” or the gnarled-around-the-edges electronics and irregular cowbell on “Keep an Eye on Dan.” The musical winks to the band’s past are a nice touch, too: “Keep an Eye on Dan” closes with the same piano melody that opens “S.O.S.,” while the soaring flute opening of “Bumble Bee” is surely a nod to “Fernando.”

But, as Benny and Björn’s very successful if never entirely satisfying post-ABBA musical Chess demonstrated, without the vocals of Agnetha and Anni-Frid—perhaps pop music’s most durable lead vocal combination—ABBA are just BB. Their voices are what make the group, and they’re still capable—both solo and in duet—of expressing melancholy and ecstasy within the same breath. On “I Still Have Faith in You” when Anni-Frid declares her enduring faith after all these years, as if through gritted teeth, you can feel the maculate defiance, her voice strong but still haunted by the passing of time. And Agnetha’s delivery of "Don't Shut Me Down”’s opening lines—“A while ago, I heard the sound of children's laughter/Now it's quiet, so I guess they left the park”—is nothing short of devastating.

ABBA understand, perhaps better than any other band, the epic importance of pop music against the humdrum rumble of everyday life. Pop matters to ABBA because people and feelings matter. But ABBA know that pop can also be ridiculous, and it is a relief to find that the band haven’t jettisoned the outlandishness that marked some of their best material, even as they reflect on the passing of the years. “When You Danced With Me,” the very second track here, is a crossover between pop and Celtic jig that even Ed Sheeran ’s “Galway Girl” might consider just a bit too much . “Little Things,” which follows, is a Christmas song that ends with a children’s choir singing about “tiny elves with wings.” Maturity might bring wisdom, but Voyage proves you don’t have to be boring with it.

And yet, by ABBA’s own imperial standards, this is more ABBA Silver than ABBA Gold. “Just a Notion,” the album’s third single, was originally rejected for the band’s 1979 album Voulez-Vous (the Voyage version puts the original vocals over a new backing); winningly chirpy as the results are, that kind of knock back would never have happened to “I Have a Dream,” which places “Just a Notion” squarely in the second tier of ABBA recordings. “I Still Have Faith in You,” meanwhile, is two thirds of a brilliant song, let down by the rather earthbound melody in the song’s verse (if, indeed, it is a verse—these things can be hard to define with a band as hook-laden as ABBA), where Anni-Frid sings “Do I have it in me?/I believe it is in there.” “I Still Have Faith in You” is doubtlessly a great song. But you suspect it would not have passed the band’s titanium quality control in the 1970s, given the strength of some of their unreleased material. In ABBA’s best songs, every second is golden.

Still, a second-string ABBA record is far better than most pop groups can muster, and Voyage is the rare post-reformation album to build upon the band’s legacy without abandoning what we loved about their classic records in the first place. That makes Voyage a surprisingly necessary trip into the present from a band who could have coasted on the warm fumes of adulation ad infinitum.

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ABBA Voyage producer hints at new venues worldwide

Svana Gisla reveals talks for duplicate productions of the smash-hit show in North America, Australia and elsewhere

By Gordon Masson on 04 Mar 2024

the voyage abba

As one of the keynote interviews during Touring Entertainment Live (TEL) at ILMC, producer Svana Gisla gave a fascinating insight into the creation and operation of ABBA Voyage .

The smash hit show has so far has sold more than two million tickets for the shows in its purpose-built arena in London. And Gisla told delegates that the need to duplicate the tech for the groundbreaking production may soon become reality, as its owners and operators explore building more facilities to entertain fans around the world.

Gisla began by speaking about her background working for a division of Ridley Scott Films, where she was involved in making music videos for the likes of Madonna, Coldplay, the Rolling Stones, Beyoncé and Kylie Minogue among others.

Having created a company with a Swedish film director in 2015, she detailed working with David Bowie in the last six months of his life, and how she swore she would not work with music again. “Then ABBA called,” she laughed.

“In the beginning, we thought it might be a concert and a production that we could take on tour, but it cannot – that is impossible. It needed its own space, so it actually felt very normal that we would build our own arena, so I found myself going around London looking for land… and we found an old car park in the Olympic Park, infested with rats – it was perfect!”

“When you have a team of people who are all already excelling in their fields, and then they raise their game even higher, how can you fail?”

Explaining how the creation of the show happened across various pandemic lockdowns, Svana noted that the production had to marry the digital world with the physical arena. “Light is the connector – we have five different lighting systems,” she said. But she confessed that there was a fear that if they did not get everything perfect, ABBA Voyage could have become just like watching a film.

Noting another moment that had the potential to end the project, she revealed that during the motion capture element of creation, “The whole project nearly derailed when the boys found out that they would have to shave their beards.”

Costing £141 million, the entire venture was funded privately from Swedish investors. Responding to a question from moderator James Drury, Gisla stated, “The size of it did not scare me because when you have a team of people who are all already excelling in their fields, and then they raise their game even higher, how can you fail?”

Answering a question from a TEL delegate, Gisla show down suggestions that the ABBA Voyage team is working to create similar shows for other artists. Indeed, she also put the record straight about the many erroneous reports in the press about other companies claiming to be behind the show.

Gisla also ran through some of the astonishing statistics behind ABBA Voyage, saying that the show attracts 21,000 people each week and to date has sold more than two million tickets. “25% of the visitors come from overseas, and 80% of those come to London just to see ABBA,” she said noting that an economic impact study found that the production had generated £322 million for the local area in its first year.

“25% of the visitors come from overseas, and 80% of those come to London just to see ABBA”

Digging further into the numbers she said that 70% of the staff working on ABBA Voyage were hired locally, while the company does its best to be part of the community in its East London location.

“You cannot just come in and take – you have to give something back,” she said. “We do workshops for the local schools and explain to the kids how we did the show, giving them the experience behind the scenes of one of the most high tech shows ever created.”

Describing the purpose-built arena as “the least demountable demountable building,” Gisla concluded that although it is impossible to take the production on the road, its creators are in talks to duplicate the venture in the likes of the United States, Australia and elsewhere in Europe. “It’s a complicated beast, however, because you need to have one million visitors per year to make it a viable business,” she added.

Leading executives from the world’s biggest and most successful touring shows and exhibitions gathered for the inaugural TEL on the final day of this year’s sold out ILMC to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the multi-billion dollar sector.

Companies attending included ASM Global, Live Nation, FKP Scorpio, Kilimanjaro Group, Neon, Semmel Exhibitions, Fever, TEO, RoadCo Entertainment, Terrapin Station Entertainment, Cirque du Soleil, Harlem Globetrotters, Imagine Exhibitions, Broadway Live, Pophouse Entertainment, Layered Reality.

AEG Europe, Great Leap Forward, Science Museum London, lililililil, Imagine Exhibitions, Universcience, Proactiv Entertainment, Let’s Go Company, MB Presents, World on Ice, Expona, Slam Dunk Entertainment, World Concert Artists, Grand Palais Immersif, Fierylight and Opus One were also in attendance.

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Cyndi Lauper inks deal with firm behind ABBA Voyage for new immersive performance project

Pop icon Cyndi Lauper, who rose to fame thanks to hits like “Time After Time” and “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” has entered a partnership with the Swedish masterminds behind the immersive virtual concert ABBA Voyage - Björn Ulvaeus’ Pophouse Entertainment Group - to develop new ways to bring her music to fans. (Feb. 29)

Cyndi Lauper arrives at the 74th annual Tony Awards in New York on Sept. 26, 2021, left, and Bjorn Ulvaeus appears at the premiere of "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" in London on July 16, 2018. (AP Photo)

Cyndi Lauper arrives at the 74th annual Tony Awards in New York on Sept. 26, 2021, left, and Bjorn Ulvaeus appears at the premiere of “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” in London on July 16, 2018. (AP Photo)

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STOCKHOLM (AP) — Legendary pop icon Cyndi Lauper, who rose to fame in the 1980s with hits such as “Time After Time” and “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” has entered a partnership with the Swedish masterminds behind the immersive virtual concert ABBA Voyage .

The partnership announced Thursday by the Pophouse Entertainment Group co-founded by ABBA singer Björn Ulvaeus , involves the acquisition of a majority share of the award-winning singer-songwriter’s music. The aim is to develop new ways to bring Lauper’s music to fans and younger audiences through new performances and live experiences.

Lauper said she agreed to the sale, for an undisclosed amount, when it became apparent the Swedish company wasn’t just in it for the money. “Most suits, when you tell them an idea, their eyes glaze over, they just want your greatest hits,” Lauper told The Associated Press at the Pophouse headquarters in Stockholm earlier this month. “But these guys are a multimedia company, they’re not looking to just buy my catalog, they want to make something new.”

Four decades after her breakthrough solo album, the 70-year-old Queens native is still brimming with ideas and the energy to bring them to stage.

Lauper said she’s not aiming to replicate the glittery supernova brought to stage in ABBA Voyage where stupefying technology offers digital avatars of the ABBA band members as they looked in their 1970s heyday, but rather an “immersive theater piece” that transports audiences to the New York she grew up in.

“It’s about where I came from and the three women that were very influential in my life, my mom, my grandmother and my aunt,” she said.

Lauper has long advocated for women’s rights and gender equality, and her 1983 hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” reinvented by other female artists through the years, has become a feminist anthem. Lauper seems humbled by this responsibility.

It was during the large Women’s March in 2017 following the inauguration of Donald Trump where she saw protesters with signs reading “Girls just want to have fun(damental rights)”that gave her the impetus to raise money for women’s health. So far, she has raised more than $150,000 to help small organizations that provide safe and legal abortions.

“I grew up with three women. I saw the disenfranchisement very clearly. And I saw the struggles, I saw the joy, I saw the love,” she said. “And it made me come out with boxing gloves on.”

Lauper hopes the new show can bring the memories of those women back to life a little, along with “the reasons I sang certain songs, and the things that I wrote about.”

the voyage abba

Cyndi Lauper inks deal with firm behind ABBA Voyage for new immersive performance project

Legendary pop icon Cyndi Lauper, who rose to fame in the 1980s with hits such as “Time After Time” and “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” has entered a partnership with the Swedish masterminds behind the immersive virtual concert ABBA Voyage

STOCKHOLM -- Legendary pop icon Cyndi Lauper, who rose to fame in the 1980s with hits such as “Time After Time” and “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” has entered a partnership with the Swedish masterminds behind the immersive virtual concert ABBA Voyage.

The partnership announced Thursday by the Pophouse Entertainment Group co-founded by ABBA singer Björn Ulvaeus, involves the acquisition of a majority share of the award-winning singer-songwriter’s music. The aim is to develop new ways to bring Lauper’s music to fans and younger audiences through new performances and live experiences.

Lauper said she agreed to the sale, for an undisclosed amount, when it became apparent the Swedish company wasn’t just in it for the money. “Most suits, when you tell them an idea, their eyes glaze over, they just want your greatest hits,” Lauper told The Associated Press at the Pophouse headquarters in Stockholm earlier this month. “But these guys are a multimedia company, they’re not looking to just buy my catalog, they want to make something new.”

Four decades after her breakthrough solo album, the 70-year-old Queens native is still brimming with ideas and the energy to bring them to stage.

Lauper said she’s not aiming to replicate the glittery supernova brought to stage in ABBA Voyage where stupefying technology offers digital avatars of the ABBA band members as they looked in their 1970s heyday, but rather an “immersive theater piece” that transports audiences to the New York she grew up in.

“It’s about where I came from and the three women that were very influential in my life, my mom, my grandmother and my aunt,” she said.

Lauper has long advocated for women’s rights and gender equality, and her 1983 hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” reinvented by other female artists through the years, has become a feminist anthem. Lauper seems humbled by this responsibility.

It was during the large Women’s March in 2017 following the inauguration of Donald Trump where she saw protesters with signs reading “Girls just want to have fun(damental rights)”that gave her the impetus to raise money for women’s health. So far, she has raised more than $150,000 to help small organizations that provide safe and legal abortions.

“I grew up with three women. I saw the disenfranchisement very clearly. And I saw the struggles, I saw the joy, I saw the love,” she said. “And it made me come out with boxing gloves on.”

Lauper hopes the new show can bring the memories of those women back to life a little, along with “the reasons I sang certain songs, and the things that I wrote about.”

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Digital avatars perform to 3,000 fans at the Abba area in east London on Saturday.

Benny, Björn and Frida drop in for first anniversary of London’s Abba Voyage

Show in which youthful digital avatars of the group perform on stage has sold more than 1.3m tickets

On stage, digital technology gave the 3,000-strong audience at the Abba arena in east London perfectly recreated youthful versions of Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid.

At the rear of the purpose-built auditorium, three of the legendary group, now in their 70s, appeared in real life, waving like the pop royalty they are. The crowd was in ecstatic meltdown.

Benny Anderson, Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad were at the arena on Saturday evening to celebrate the first anniversary of the phenomenally successful show, Abba Voyage, featuring avatar versions of the band members.

More than 1.3m tickets have been sold to date, and the show has been extended to run at its London venue until May 2024. There are reports of a world tour , and Ulvaeus has suggested that replicas of the purpose-built arena could be constructed in Asia, Australia and North America.

For Kim Smith, who had travelled from Portsmouth to see the show with her daughter Lucy as a 62nd birthday treat, it was an emotional experience. “It took me back 40 years,” she said. “I was so overwhelmed that I cried.”

Abba Voyage opened a year ago to five-star reviews. “The effect is genuinely jaw-dropping … it’s almost impossible to tell you’re not watching human beings,” the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis wrote . Others described it as incredible, spectacular, dazzling and epic.

Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Bjorn join in the celebrations on Saturday.

It took seven years and $175m to develop the technology and build the arena near the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. The four members of the band spent a month in motion-capture suits and helmets to help create the avatars – or Abbatars – that now “perform” seven times a week while their human counterparts can put their feet up.

“It was meticulously prepared, enormously expensive and incredibly difficult to create believable digital people,” said Svana Gisla, a producer of Abba Voyage. “But the result is magical.”

The avatars created by the visual effects masters Industrial Light & Magic had to “blend with the physical world”, including a 10-piece live band, said Gisla. “The join needed to be invisible. It needed to become one unit.

“Technology is the vehicle, but the audience shouldn’t feel the technology. We only got into the arena six weeks before the show opened, and at that point we couldn’t be sure it was going to work.”

The 90-minute show is the same for every performance, unlike a live gig where artists can mix up the numbers they perform or tailor their chats to the audience. But, said Gisla, the live band – which has its own spotlight mid-show – and the audience make each show unique.

The fans come in wigs, sequins and shiny catsuits, some as old or older than Abba, others born long after the band’s last live performance in 1982. The 350 shows since the opening on 27 May last year have attracted people from more than 140 countries.

Brendan Wagner and Steven Aney had come from Brisbane and Melbourne respectively to meet up with old friends Sophie Doherty and Jen Woods for Saturday’s matinee. They described it as “amazing, fantastic” with even the textures of the avatar’s spectacular costumes “completely believable”.

Audiences are amazed how lifelike the ‘Abbatars’ are.

Up to 200 staff – 75% recruited in the local area – work on each performance, including those whose role includes enforcing the ban on photographs and video.

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“It’s lovely when people put their phones in their pockets and are there in the moment. It’s very rare to be at a concert where people are just dancing and singing, and not spending 80% of their time filming other people,” said Gisla.

Last week, Abba ruled out a reunion for next year’s Eurovision in Stockholm, which will be 50 years after the band’s performance of Waterloo won the competition. They have previously reportedly turned down the offer of $1bn to reunite. “We can celebrate 50 years of Abba without us being on stage,” Ulvaeus told the BBC .

Neither can their avatars perform outside the bespoke arena. “We joke that they don’t do special appearances, award ceremonies or barmitzvahs, because they can’t,” said Gisla.

Other performers and promoters have watched the pioneering show’s extraordinary success, with some inevitably pondering their own futures on stage.

“Good luck to them,” said Gisla. “It’s very expensive at the moment, and technology moves very quickly, especially AI driven technology, which is probably further along than we even imagine. But the technology isn’t enough. There is also an emotional experience in the arena.”

Ludvig Anderssen, another producer on the show, attributed that to the blurring of “the borderline between real and fantasy worlds. It triggers feelings about youth, ageing, mortality and immortality”.

Avatars would not replace live performance, Gisla said. “Musicians need to perform and audiences want to see performances, that’s never going to die. That’s an art form that has been alive for thousands of years. That’s the human connection that we need in life, and this is just another form of entertainment.”

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Bloomberg

Cyndi Lauper, ’80s Icon, Sells Her Music to ABBA Star, Plans Immersive Theater Show

(Bloomberg) -- Singer Cyndi Lauper is selling her music catalog, including the 1980s hits True Colors and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, to Sweden’s Pophouse Entertainment Group AB as part of a project to create new outlets for the singer’s work.

The Swedish company — founded by ABBA star Bjorn Ulvaeus and EQT AB Chairman Conni Jonsson — said Thursday it acquired the rights to Lauper’s music for an undisclosed sum and is forming a joint venture with the singer to manage the catalog.

“I’ve had other companies approach me, and I really didn’t have any interest in selling my catalog,” Lauper, 70, said in an interview at Pophouse’s headquarters in Stockholm. “But this is different.”

The singer and the company aim to exploit her music through live shows, television and other projects. Keeping performers in front of the public, as Pophouse has successfully done with the legendary group ABBA, can protect and improve on the steady returns that song libraries produce.

Lauper, who has sold more than 50 million records over four decades, declined to comment on the financial terms of the deal, beyond saying Pophouse bought “a majority” of the catalog. She was enticed by the company’s ability to combine music and art through technology.

“I thought, ‘OK, they have energy and everyone is highly creative,’” Lauper said. “And it gives me the opportunity to grow my legacy as opposed to watching it on commercials. I have bigger plans.”

One of the creative projects being planned is an immersive theater experience that surrounds and pulls viewers in, following in the footsteps of ABBA Voyage . That show, which premiered in 2022, has sold more than 2.1 million tickets for performances featuring three-dimensional renderings of the four former band members. 

Pophouse is the biggest investor in ABBA Voyage , and is planning a similar venture with avatars of the rock band KISS, which retired in December after a 50-year career.

Lauper’s show will be based on the women in her life, set in her grandmother’s garden in the New York district of Queens, with the singer hoping to take the stage, she said.

“It’s about the people that influenced me — my mother, my aunt and my grandmother,” she said. “When I saw ABBA Voyage , I had this idea of bringing them back to life and bringing that whole neighborhood back to life.”

Decades from now, a hologram could replace Lauper onstage, the singer said. The timing for the show is up in the air, pending a decision on a potential global tour separate from the Pophouse collaboration.

Other potential projects include a TV series, a festival and an immersive installation. Lauper’s Broadway music, including multiple Tony Award-winner Kinky Boots , isn’t part of the Pophouse deal.

Pophouse, founded in 2014, began its venture into music investments in 2022 by acquiring the catalogs of the DJ Avicii and Swedish House Mafia, two of the country’s biggest music exports. As part of the deals, Pophouse also formed ventures with the sellers.

Other recent transactions in music catalogs include Sony Group Corp.’s reported acquisition of half of pop icon Michael Jackson’s catalog from the trustees of his estate for at least $600 million. Singer Rod Stewart sold his publishing and recorded music rights to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group for about $100 million.

“Cyndi is a dream partner for Pophouse,” Chief Executive Officer Per Sundin said in the interview. “She shares our ambition and desire to do the unexpected and push creativity beyond conventional limits. We believe in artists with stories to tell, that we can build upon.”

Songs as an asset class can generate relatively steady returns. The market reached a frenzy in 2021 and 2022, but suffered some setbacks with the recent jump in borrowing costs. The high-profile music investor, Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd., whose catalog includes songs by Neil Young and Blondie, canceled an interim dividend in October.

“We look for iconic artists that meant something in music history, and we want to enhance or amplify and expose the music to new generations,” Sundin said, adding that doing so tends to boost streaming as well.

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Cyndi Lauper, ’80s Icon, Sells Her Music to ABBA Star, Plans Immersive Theater Show

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Cyndi Lauper joins forces with ABBA Voyage firm for immersive concert experience

Iconic pop singer Cyndi Lauper, who rose to fame in the 1980s with hits such as “Time After Time” and “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” has entered a partnership with the Swedish masterminds behind the immersive virtual concert ABBA Voyage .

The partnership, recently announced by the Pophouse Entertainment Group co-founded by ABBA singer Björn Ulvaeus, involves the acquisition of a majority share of the award-winning singer-songwriter’s music.

Lauper said she agreed to the sale, for an undisclosed amount, when it became apparent the Swedish company wasn’t just in it for the money. “Most suits, when you tell them an idea, their eyes glaze over, they just want your greatest hits,” Lauper told the AP at the Pophouse headquarters in Stockholm earlier this month.

“But these guys are a multimedia company, they’re not looking to just buy my catalog, they want to make something new.”

Who’s on top of Apple Music's 2023 global song chart?

Culture Re-View: The day ABBA achieved Eurovision glory

Four decades after her breakthrough solo album, the 70-year-old Queens native is still brimming with ideas and the energy to bring them to stage.

Lauper said she’s not aiming to replicate the glittery supernova brought to stage in ABBA Voyage where stupefying technology offers digital avatars of the ABBA band members as they looked in their 1970s heyday, but rather an “immersive theatre piece” that transports audiences to the New York she grew up in.

“It’s about where I came from and the three women that were very influential in my life, my mom, my grandmother and my aunt,” she said.

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COMMENTS

  1. ABBA Voyage Official Website

    ABBA Arena, Pudding Mill Lane, London E15 2PJ. ABBA's breath-taking Arena delivers the perfect setting for ABBA Voyage, offering you a live music experience like no other. The nearest stations are well connected, with easy transport links to the rest of London, local regions and Europe. how to get here.

  2. Voyage (ABBA album)

    Voyage is the ninth and final studio album by the Swedish pop group ABBA, released 5 November 2021.With ten songs written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, it is the group's first album of new material in forty years. The album was supported by the dual single release of "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down", released alongside the album announcement on 2 September 2021.

  3. ABBA Voyage

    https://abbavoyage.com/ABBA ARE BACK with Voyage!A brand new album out November 5 and revolutionary concert coming to London Spring 2022. Listen to two bran...

  4. ABBA Voyage

    ABBA Voyage is a virtual concert residency by the Swedish pop group ABBA. The concerts feature virtual avatars (dubbed 'ABBAtars'), depicting the group as they appeared in 1979, and utilise the songs' re-recorded vocals from the group themselves in a studio in Sweden specifically for this show, accompanied by a live instrumental band on stage ...

  5. ABBA

    ABBA Voyage was released November 5. Listen here: https://abba.lnk.to/newmusic ABBA Voyage Tracklist I Still Have Faith In You When You Danced With Me Little...

  6. ABBA Voyage

    An exclusive first look at ABBA Voyage. Experience it live and in person only at the ABBA Arena, London. "It has to be seen to be believed" (Rolling Stone) B...

  7. Abba reunite for Voyage, first new album in 40 years

    Digitally de-aged avatars of Abba, that will feature in Voyage. Photograph: Abba. In the interim, their pop cultural heft has continued to grow. The stage musical Mamma Mia!, debuted in 1999, and ...

  8. Review: ABBA's 'Voyage'

    Agnetha Fältskog recited a bleak tale of total emotional isolation, words scripted by her ex-husband, doing her vocals in a darkened studio with all the lights out. It was the last thing they ...

  9. ABBA's 'Voyage' Is Everything It's Cracked Up to Be: 'Concert' Review

    ABBA's 'Voyage,' featuring a live band with CGI renditions of the four members, is a remarkably live-seeming show, once you get used to it. Plus Icon Click to expand the Mega Menu.

  10. Abba Voyage Review: No Ordinary Abba Night at the Club

    Abba Voyage is an exercise in symbol worship that separates itself from an ordinary Abba night at the club through state-of-the-art production values. "To be or not to be — that is no longer ...

  11. ABBA: Voyage Album Review

    Still, a second-string ABBA record is far better than most pop groups can muster, and Voyage is the rare post-reformation album to build upon the band's legacy without abandoning what we loved ...

  12. Abba: Voyage review

    T he journey to Voyage, Abba's final studio album and their first in 40 years, began with a tweet from their shiny new Twitter account in August, coaxing people to "join us". Billboards ...

  13. Abba Voyage review: jaw-dropping avatar act that's destined to be

    Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson at the premiere of Abba Voyage. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA. Whatever they are, the effect is genuinely jaw-dropping.

  14. ABBA

    Listen to the new album: https://abba.lnk.to/VoyageAlbumListen to ABBA: https://abba.lnk.to/musicIDFollow ABBAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ABBA/ Instag...

  15. ABBA Voyage producer hints at new venues worldwide

    Gisla also ran through some of the astonishing statistics behind ABBA Voyage, saying that the show attracts 21,000 people each week and to date has sold more than two million tickets. "25% of the visitors come from overseas, and 80% of those come to London just to see ABBA," she said noting that an economic impact study found that the ...

  16. Buy Tickets

    ABBA Voyage Tickets. March 2024. Extra Easter concerts added Good availability Low availability Limited availability Returns only Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 26 27 28 ...

  17. Cyndi Lauper inks deal with firm behind ABBA Voyage for new immersive

    STOCKHOLM (AP) — Legendary pop icon Cyndi Lauper, who rose to fame in the 1980s with hits such as "Time After Time" and "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," has entered a partnership with the Swedish masterminds behind the immersive virtual concert ABBA Voyage.. The partnership announced Thursday by the Pophouse Entertainment Group co-founded by ABBA singer Björn Ulvaeus, involves the ...

  18. 'It was the best day of my life!' Guardian readers on Abba Voyage

    The Abba Voyage concert is stunning. I danced, sang, cried and stood in jaw-dropping awe at the theatre. It is truly an immersion of human emotion with hi-tech that I have never seen before. Bravo ...

  19. Cyndi Lauper inks deal with firm behind ABBA Voyage for new immersive

    Lauper said she's not aiming to replicate the glittery supernova brought to stage in ABBA Voyage where stupefying technology offers digital avatars of the ABBA band members as they looked in ...

  20. ABBA Voyage: The Journey Is About To Begin

    So what is ABBA Voyage? It is a revolutionary concert that blends the physical and the digital worlds - the concert that ABBA have always wanted to give thei...

  21. Cyndi Lauper inks deal with firm behind ABBA Voyage for new ...

    Lauper said she's not aiming to replicate the glittery supernova brought to stage in ABBA Voyage where stupefying technology offers digital avatars of the ABBA band members as they looked in ...

  22. Abba Voyage review

    Abba Voyage continues at the Abba Arena, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London E20, until May 2024. Watch a trailer for Abba Voyage. Explore more on these topics. Abba; Kitty Empire's artist of the ...

  23. ABBA Voyage

    Thank you for waiting, the journey is about to begin.Agnetha, Björn, Benny, Anni-Frid.ABBA are back with #ABBAVoyage, a revolutionary concert 40 years in the...

  24. Lauper begins partnershi­p with firm behind ABBA Voyage for new

    PressReader. Catalog; For You; Chattanooga Times Free Press. Lauper begins partnershi­p with firm behind ABBA Voyage for new immersive project 2024-03-01 - BY DAVID KEYTON . STOCKHOLM — Legendary pop icon Cyndi Lauper, who rose to fame in the 1980s with hits such as "Time After Time" and "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," has entered a partnershi­p with the Swedish mastermind­s behind ...

  25. Benny, Björn and Frida drop in for first anniversary of London's Abba

    Benny Anderson, Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad were at the arena on Saturday evening to celebrate the first anniversary of the phenomenally successful show, Abba Voyage, featuring ...

  26. Cyndi Lauper, '80s Icon, Sells Her Music to ABBA Star, Plans ...

    Pophouse is the biggest investor in ABBA Voyage, and is planning a similar venture with avatars of the rock band KISS, which retired in December after a 50-year career.

  27. Cyndi Lauper joins forces with ABBA Voyage firm for immersive ...

    Abba perform at United Nations General Assembly, in New York, during taping of NBC-TV Special, "The Music for UNICEF concert" on 9 January 1979.