ABBA have confirmed that they’re releasing five new songs in 2021, 35 years since their last release.
The beloved Swedish group – made up of Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog and Bjorn Ulvaeus – were forced to push back their planned 2020 reunion to next year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The new song titles include ‘I Still Have Faith In You’ and ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’.
Writer Geoff Lloyd told the Reasons To Be Cheerful podcast: “I got to spend an hour […] with Björn Ulvaeus from ABBA via Zoom. He’s quarantining – he’s got an island in the Stockholm archipelago.”
“They’ve recorded five new songs. They should have been out at the end of last year… Because of technical difficulties and the pandemic, it’s delayed things. But he promised me that the new Abba music will be out in 2021.”
The Eurovision winners were originally planning on releasing only two songs for their comeback, but were given more time than planned – and will now be releasing five.
The group have also planned a holographic tour to support the music, which has been pushed back to next year.
“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,” the band stated.
The upcoming tour will see the famous group 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.”
Bjorn teased what to expect from the music, telling PA: “One of them is a pop tune, very danceable. The other is more timeless, more reflective, that is all I will say.”
“It is Nordic sad, but happy at the same time.”
“I think that exuberant quality of the two ladies [Fältskog and Lyngstad] together singing, that makes the saddest song a bit uplifting. I think that is what happens and that [it] is very organic: [it] isn’t calculated, [it] just happened that way.”
