It seems crazy to be wondering about more new Abba material when the Swedish pop legends are about to release a comeback album after 40 years that nobody thought would happen. But there won't be any new music after this, the band's Benny Andersson has confirmed.
“This is it,” Andersson told the Guardian in a new piece on Abba's return. “It’s got to be, you know.”
The songwriter also refutes that he said the band would never return during their last, awkward TV show appearance on Noel Edmonds’ Late Late Breakfast Show in 1982. “I never said myself that Abba was never going to happen again," he added. "But I can tell you now: this is it.”
The two unfinished songs from the sessions for Abba's 10-track new album Voyage – released on 5 November - will remain just that, but fans have a lot to look forward to from both the album and Voyage shows.
These will see the band in youthful form as 'Abbatars' performing and even interacting with a 10-piece band that has been assembled by former Klaxons member James Righton to perform around 24 Abba songs.
The four members of Abba spent five weeks at Ealing Studios in London last year helping to create digital versions of themselves, based on how they looked in 1979, performing every song in the set for capturing.
“The tech side, the possibility of doing something nobody has ever done before, that was so tempting and hard to resist,” Abba's Björn Ulvaeus says. “This project has been meandering, but it has a kind of role and a direction, and it’s going to be wonderful to see what it becomes. It will be, I think, an experience that no one has ever had before.”
The shows for May and June 2022 have been five years in the making - since the first new Voyage songs were completed in 2018. They will take place in a special 'ABBA Arena' in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.
But new upbeat Voyage single Just A notion has been in the works for even longer. The song's origins date back to 1978 when it was recorded for Abba's sixth studio album Voulez-Vous, but didn't make the cut.
“Just A Notion is a ridiculously happy song and hopefully it will cheer you up in these dark times!” said Ulvaeus
You can compare the new version with the original take below.
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