40 years of breaking ABBA – Vorarlburger Nachrichten

Stockholm They’re back: Swedish pop group Abba released their first studio album in nearly 40 years, reviving their typical sound from the 1970s. “Voyage” is available online as well as on CD, vinyl and cassette tapes since Friday.

It features previously published songs “I Still Have Faith In You”, “Don’t Shut Me Down” and “Just A Notion” as well as seven other songs by Agnetha Waltzkog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Anderson and Annie Fred “Frida” Hear Lingstad.

The fact that “Voyage” has typical Abba music with catchy melodies is hard to hear on new recordings – this was indeed the case with “I Still Have Faith In You”. In the song that marks the beginning of “Voyage,” the band appropriately asks: “Do I have that in me?” Only to answer with complete confidence: “We have it in us!” (We have it in us!)

Based on the song’s title, it can be said: ABBA believes in himself and their music even at an advanced age, and fans should do the same 40 years after the great song “Abamanya”.

For the northernmost European quartet, “Voyage” is the ninth and first album since “The Visitors” released on November 30, 1981. After his last television appearance in late 1982, ABBA announced a decades-long break as a band after eight studio albums and featuring world hits like Waterloo, Mamma Mia, SOS, and Dancing Queen. . Since then, there have been several compilations of the pop-couple band, but not an entire album of recent studio recordings – until now.

“It’s strange to talk about oppa in the present tense,” Ulvaeus told CBS a few days ago. He and his three band members actually belong to a different generation than today’s pop stars like Ed Sheeran, Adele, Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber: Ulvaeus turned 76 this year, as did Lingstad (75), Anderson (74) and Valskog (71). They already left 70 behind.

Anderson told the broadcaster they didn’t really know what to expect when Fältskog and Lyngstad went to the microphones in his studio in Stockholm. “I mean: You’re not 30 anymore, you’re over 70.” Then, however, the two of them had come to the right note. “They walked in, began to sing and bang! In short! ”The first fans in social networks that night were similarly positive about the music.