ABBA Will Release Five New Songs, With Avatar Tour Expected In 2021
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ABBA will have five new songs on the market in 2021, and has pushed back their plans to do a holographic tour to support the music because of the pandemic.
The Swedish group – Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog and Bjorn Ulvaeus – were originally planning to release only two songs for their comeback. But the long process between the original announcement in 2018 and now has allowed them time to do more than planned. It will be the first new ABBA music in 35 years.
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In a statement announcing the new songs, ABBA said, “The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence. We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio.”
For the tour, ABBA will appear as their younger selves. “They photographed us from all possible angles, they made us grimace in front of cameras, they painted dots on our faces, they measured our heads,” said Bjorn Ulvaeus. “Apparently a cranium doesn’t change with age the way the rest of your body falls apart.”
ABBA split in 1982. They reunited in 2016 at a private event marking the 50th anniversary of the first meeting between songwriters Bjorn and Benny.
The long gap between the breakup and today has not diminished the world’s passion for the group.
Last month, Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro reported that a Mamma Mia 3 could be in the cards down the road.
Judy Craymer, who produced the combined $1 billion-plus-grossing feature films Mamma Mia! and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!, as well as the original West End $4 billion-grossing ABBA musical, said that a trilogy was possible. Craymer said that she intended to develop the musical during the COVID-19 shutdown.
“I was meant to have been getting on with that, in my head, during these months. But then I got hit with COVID fog,” says the producer.
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