abba voyage london technology

ABBA Voyage’s creators tell us how they made the show, and what’s next

Producers, the director and choreographer reveal what went into the ambitious new show

The team behind the creation of the new ABBA Voyage live experience have spoken to NME about how it was made, as well as what could be next for both the show and the band. Watch our video interview above.

• READ MORE: ABBA Voyage reviewed: an epic avatar mega-mix from a brave new world

Premiering earlier this week at the purpose-built ABBA Arena in Stratford, East London, to a delighted response from fans, the ambitious production sees a “digital” version of ABBA (or ‘ABBAtars’) performing alongside a 10-piece live band ( put together with the help of Klaxons’ James Righton ).

Working on the show with ABBA were Svana Gisla (who produced Jay-Z  and  Beyoncé ‘s On the Run Tour), choreographer Wayne McGregor, Johan Renck (who directed  David Bowie ‘s videos for ‘Blackstar’ and ‘Lazarus’), Baillie Walsh (who has directed for  Massive Attack  and  Bruce Springsteen ) and producer Ludvig Andersson (son of ABBA’s Benny Andersson and producer of  And Then We Danced ,  Yung Lean ‘s ‘In My Head’ and  Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again ).

“We did an awful lot of research and development on this, as you can imagine,” Gisla told NME from the red carpet. “We did two years of trying to figure out what this is. We put a lot of time into the philosophical side of it. This is not just about technology, this is about emotion. We wanted to understand the core of ABBA and the music and how to deliver it in 2022.

“A lot of this is about restraint. When all of the technology and everything is available to you, it becomes an exercise in restraint. The music is the guiding light.”

Gisla said that there was “nothing nostalgic about this concert apart from the music”, and that the whole approach was very forward-thinking.

“ABBA look like they did in 1979, but they’re firmly rooted in the now and in the future. Everything else is as forward as it can be,” she said. “You’re going to see a lot of things that you’ve never seen before. The feeling of being inside the arena will be unique, it’s very immersive. People use that word a lot, but when you go in there you’ll fully realise the capabilities of an immersive environment. It’s like being in the eye of the storm.”

Recommended

Asked about how long the show could be set to run for, Gisla replied: “I don’t want to jinx it, but if this is a success then we can be here for a few years. We’re on borrowed land, we didn’t break any ground, the arena is moveable and we can pack up and leave when we aren’t wanted anymore.

“I hope the audience wants us to stay for a bit, because we feel like we’ve made something really special.

Director Baillie Walsh, meanwhile, said it was surreal that the “dream” from inside his head finally now on the stage for people to see. Walsh sternly denied that what fans would be seeing was “a hologram”, and in fact something quite different.

“We filmed ABBA for five weeks,” he said. “Wayne McGregor extended their moves into younger bodies – our doubles – and we blended those performances together. Now we have our 2022 ABBA.

“It was very emotional every day. It was like NASA in having so many people in the studio every day, but the whole studio were in tears most days. It was really extraordinary.”

Asked why it was necessary to build their own venue for the project, Walsh said that it was needed to match the ambition of the concept.

“ABBA’s ambition for this project was a beautiful thing, and it was a creative ambition, rather than a money-making exercise,” he said. “Building the arena was just part of that. You can have more lights because you’re not moving around from venue to venue and it’s bespoke. I could design the show around this building.”

As for how long the show could be set to run in London for, he said: “It’s up to the fans really. I hope it’s a destination for a long, long time.”

It is now believed that the concept could be copied for other veteran acts, but Walsh said it might not be so easy to imitate.

“ABBA were so involved in this,” he said. “They’re the heart and soul of it. There aren’t many bands like ABBA around. A posthumous show wouldn’t have the same kind of feeling. The fans know that ABBA are involved and that this isn’t a cynical exercise. This is ABBA.”

Choreographer Wayne McGregor agreed – detailing what went in to capturing the pop icons’ dance moves and movements.

“We’re using a process called motion capture, which you’ve probably seen in movies,” he said. “We use these little dots to take the maths out your body. We take all these zeroes and ones and put them into a computer and build an avatar. It’s a long process. It captures the essence of you, but then we really have to work into that.

“I was taking dance moves from them – I wouldn’t dare show ABBA dance moves. I just wanted them to be themselves and get them back into their performance energy, because they haven’t performed for a while. Then I had to work with the body doubles to transform some of that amazing physical from the ‘70s into maths and find a way of combining the two.”

Enjoying those weeks of having the band perform and sing before him, McGregor described their time together as “perfect”.

“It’s insane to have those amazing performers sing their whole catalogue in front of you,” he said. “They were so bold, brave and into it. It was really exciting. How amazing is it to have this legacy project where you can see ABBA over and over again? It’s a piece of theatre, a piece of performance, a concert like no other. You really feel like you’re inside the music and that’s fabulous.”

He added: “For this show, the technology marries emotion and brings the emotion of those songs directly into you. I love the fact that audiences can actually come in and dance while watching. I’ll be back, every Friday night!”

Co-executive producer Renck, said that he ranked his experience of working with ABBA among his bucket-list projects of working with Bowie, but “in a very different capacity”.

“My entire upbringing was about music,” he told NME . “Everything that is me is music in one way or another. It’s the most important thing for me ever, and the life journey of being seven or eight-years-old and my mother playing ABBA in the car to being here now is a pretty substantial thing, isn’t it?”

He remained coy about details of the show itself, but said: “I’m not going to tell you anything because it’s better to just come and witness it. It’s a very unique experience in all sorts of ways. Whether you’re an ABBA fan or not.

“I’m using the word ‘experience’ a lot, but it takes you to a place you haven’t been before.”

We also asked each of the team if they felt that this really could be the last we see of ABBA.

“I think this is the final thing,” replied Gisla. “They’re quite genuine in that, but they’ve said that before. I think this is it. It took a lot to make and it was hard work, from us and from them.”

Walsh also said that he “didn’t think” ABBA would reunite for any projects again, while Renck added: “Who knows? I’m sure that some of these four do not see it as an endgame, in any shape or form. Benny is music, that’s what he lives, breathes and does every day. That’s never going to stop. Whatever iteration that comes out, who knows? But I don’t think there’s any kind of punctuation to be had.”

Watch our full video interview with the creators of ABBA Voyage at the top of the page.

All four members of ABBA also spoke to NME on the red carpet , telling us about the experience of reuniting and what might be on the horizon for the band.

When asked if the concert was a parting gift from the band, Björn Ulvaeus said: “I think this is it. It’s sad to say that but then again, you can always take it back, can’t you? So the answer is, it could be yes, it could be no.”

Meanwhile, Benny Andersson joked: “This is what you’ll see, this is what you’ll get. Then we’ll go home and we’ll sleep.”

In a five star review of ABBA Voyage ,  NME  concluded: “Ageing rockers and poppers are bound to imitate the idea, but it’ll be a struggle to come close to the experience of ABBA Voyage. We for one welcome our new ABBAtar overlords, if only for giving these songs back to us in a totally new and joyful way.”

Visit here for tickets and more information .

• Related Topics

You May Also Like

More stories, justin timberlake “refused breathalyser” when arrested for driving while intoxicated, his lawyer says, check out sabrina carpenter’s stripped-back cover of chappell roan’s ‘good luck, babe’ for bbc radio one live lounge, justin timberlake arrested for “driving while intoxicated”, sabrina carpenter says there is “no weirdness” with taylor swift over kim kardashian skims backlash, charli xcx ranks rihanna above all pop stars – except one , serj tankian slams imagine dragons for playing controversial azerbaijan gig: “i don’t respect them as human beings”, h1-key: the k-pop group becoming the voice of their generation, download festival 2024 review: despite all odds, a promising step in a new direction, ‘sasquatch sunset’ review: the weirdest and wackiest film of 2024, ‘the boys’ season four review: sweary supes battle electoral dysfunction, ‘call of duty: black ops 6’ preview: expect a scrappy gulf war shooter.

New Times, New Thinking.

Abba Voyage concert: a major technological and artistic achievement

All hail the “Abbatars” and the undeniable power of the band’s hits.

By Emily Bootle

When Abba rise through the stage of the new arena built in their name in Stratford, east London, beamed up with spotlights like gods, the stadium erupts. Despite an announcement asking the audience not to photograph or film the show to maintain the “mystery” of the Abba experience, iPhones are raised instantly to record the moment. Here are Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid as younger, virtual versions of themselves, more than 40 years after their last live show in London. Three thousand people are dying to see them. Just 90 minutes previously, a crowd had congregated outside the Pudding Mill Lane DLR station to witness the real, 2022 versions of Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid walk the red carpet for the opening night of Abba Voyage, the band’s new show created with motion capture technology, screaming with delight at a mere glimpse of the back of their heads.  

Abba Voyage is not so much a musical experience as a religious one. The stadium, nestled among blocks of flats and not far from the Olympic tower, looks something like a spaceship; this is spirituality for the future. After four balls of light transform into Abba from below the stage, their presence, no matter how unreal, is almost overwhelming.  

The show intersperses the de-aged, 30-something “Abbatars” – they are not holograms, apparently, in which case it’s completely beyond me what they are, given that they look 3D, and move like real people, and touch each other – with projections of the filmed show on huge screens that encircle half the arena, from floor to ceiling. Instantaneous switches between the Abbatars and the screen sometimes tricks your eye into thinking the giant Abba are also 3D, at an appropriate size for the intensity of the experience. 

[See also: The Edinburgh Fringe wars ]

That the show unfolds with the euphoria you would expect from a live Abba gig is testament not only to the extraordinary technology but also, of course, the power of the music. In “Chiquitita” the whole crowd rises to their feet for the first time, ecstatic. The hits keep coming: “Fernando” with a twinkling backdrop of the Northern Lights; “Lay All Your Love on Me” with a rainbow light show that engulfs the audience; an emotional rendition of “Thank You for the Music”; and a projection of Abba at Eurovision 1974 performing their winning hit “Waterloo” (here, the Abbatars dance around behind the original footage, creating a bizarre timewarp). If you thought it couldn’t get more surreal, in “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” I turn around to see that the King and Queen of Sweden, who have flown in specially for the event, are on their feet, dancing and clapping nestled among their hefty security cohort.

It’s astonishing how quickly you adjust to the avatars, which on first sight look a bit like Sims; particularly when they’re stationary, their lack of adherence to the laws of gravity gives them an uncanny weightlessness. Halfway through the show the live band, usually tucked in the left-hand corner of the enormous stage, takes over for “Does Your Mother Know” and, although they perform it with energy and skill, the three   flesh-and-blood singers shimmying across the front of the stage, somehow it doesn’t quite land – the crowd wants not only to hear the music but to be in the presence of its creators.

Abba Voyage is touted as an “immersive experience”, a term that gets thrown around a lot these days. Here it feels like it actually applies. You are drenched in Abba – the distinctive harmonies and Benny’s twanging piano, the costumes and the chemistry, and the raw joy and pain, the emotional directness that makes this music timeless and irresistible. At the very end, in a profoundly moving moment of the past meeting the present, technology giving way to reality, gods becoming humans again, the real Abba – now in their 70s – walked onstage for a curtain call and the stadium filled with deafening cheers.

Abba Voyage is an extraordinary technological and artistic achievement, brilliantly entertaining and somehow beautifully uncynical. But more than anything, it shows that there is nothing more real than pop music.

[See also: Woodstock ’99 overlooks the festival’s most disturbing problem ]

“Abba Voyage” is at the Abba Arena, London E20, until 2 October

The Saturday Read

Morning call.

• Administration / Office
• Arts and Culture
• Board Member
• Business / Corporate Services
• Client / Customer Services
• Communications
• Construction, Works, Engineering
• Education, Curriculum and Teaching
• Environment, Conservation and NRM
• Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
• Finance Management
• Health - Medical and Nursing Management
• HR, Training and Organisational Development
• Information and Communications Technology
• Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
• Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
• Legal Officers and Practitioners
• Librarians and Library Management
• OH&S, Risk Management
• Operations Management
• Planning, Policy, Strategy
• Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
• Projects, Programs and Advisors
• Property, Assets and Fleet Management
• Public Relations and Media
• Purchasing and Procurement
• Quality Management
• Science and Technical Research and Development
• Security and Law Enforcement
• Service Delivery
• Sport and Recreation
• Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
• Wellbeing, Community / Social Services

Content from our partners

Peatlands are nature’s unsung climate warriors

How the apprenticeship levy helps small businesses to transform their workforce

How to reform the apprenticeship levy

Inside Blur’s reunion psychodrama

The politics of the prehistoric past

The real Christopher Isherwood

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

Abba Voyage review — Swedish legends take a chance on technology and come up trumps

• Abba Voyage review — Swedish legends take a chance on technology and come up trumps on x (opens in a new window)
• Abba Voyage review — Swedish legends take a chance on technology and come up trumps on facebook (opens in a new window)
• Abba Voyage review — Swedish legends take a chance on technology and come up trumps on linkedin (opens in a new window)
• Abba Voyage review — Swedish legends take a chance on technology and come up trumps on whatsapp (opens in a new window)

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Abba were back on stage in London for the first time since 1979. A red carpet led into the newly built Abba Arena in the east of the city. Celebrities were pursued by roving television news teams asking for Abb-ecdotes. Inside, a group of men mystifyingly dressed in formal naval uniform turned out to be the real deal. They accompanied King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden as the royal couple took their seats in row C, directly behind the ladies and gentlemen of the press.

For curtain-up, the four members of the band rose into view from beneath the stage. Björn Ulvaeus held a guitar. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad stood frozen in the centre behind two microphone stands. Benny Andersson was poised over a set of keyboards. Cheers and applause greeted them, although the Swedish legends appeared deaf to the acclaim. Time had been kind to them. In fact, they looked unchanged from their final tour 42 years ago, back when a Canadian reviewer wrote that “for cool professionalism, assembly-line precision and computer-perfect programming, the show functions like a machine from start to finish”.

The same is even truer of their return in 2022. Abba Voyage, opening for an initial seven-month residency at a specially constructed 3,000-capacity venue, is a technological marvel. The four figures on stage were computer-generated doppelgängers of Abba as they looked in 1979. Nicknamed “Abbatars”, they have been painstakingly created by George Lucas’s special effects company Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), now owned by Disney, with the assistance of the real-life members of Abba, who are in their seventies.

ILM’s first work was for Star Wars in 1977. As that film did to cinema, so Abba Voyage does to virtual concerts. It is a blockbuster spectacle that takes showbiz illusionism to new heights. The Abbatars are remarkably lifelike. Agnetha and Anna-Frid twirled around in bejewelled ponchos and velvety jumpsuits. Benny and Björn jiggled about as they played their instruments. They looked solid, even casting shadows.  

Their artificial nature was clearer on the big screens that projected magnified views of the computerised mannequins. Agnetha tried to look pained while singing lead vocal on divorce anthem “The Winner Takes It All”, but her smoothly pixelated features struggled to compass the inefficient human emotion of sadness. Observing the spirit of tech-utopianism, the Abbatars looked more convincing in close-up when they smiled, which they did a lot. And why not? Their show was a blast.

A live eight-piece band and three backing singers performed with the beaming Abbatars. Disco classics such as “Voulez-Vous” were given a clubby, big-room revamp with a heightened snare beat, although not to the extent of suffocating their exuberant feel. Vocals were fluently concocted from previous recordings.

The Abbatars were not just programmed to deliver the hits. “The Visitors”, title track of Abba’s final album from 1981, was never performed live by the flesh-and-blood band, but turned up here as the opener. Its sci-fi synths suited the Abbatars. So did an electronically charged version of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man after Midnight)” , during which a pumped-up Anna-Frid performed karate kicks in a clingy vinyl catsuit like a character from The Matrix .

Songs from Voyage , the real band’s so-so comeback album from last year, were limited to genial disco pastiche “Don’t Shut Me Down” and orchestral power ballad “I Still Have Faith in You”, which benefited from being rearranged for a rock band. Digital Agnetha clasped hands with digital Anna-Frid as they sang it, looking into each other’s eyes with a simulacrum of fondness. Grace notes of reality added to the hall of mirrors effect, such as TV footage of the actual band singing “Waterloo” at Eurovision in 1974.

When the ageless Abbatars addressed the audience in pre-recorded remarks, they did so in the septuagenarian voices of the actual Abba members. The real foursome made a curtain call at the end, marking their first time on stage together for five years. They too were beaming, with good reason. The baton had been handed over to their digitally rejuvenated selves. Abba Voyage fleshes out the previously sketchy format of the virtual gig.

abbavoyage.com

Promoted Content

Follow the topics in this article.

• Music Add to myFT
• Ludovic Hunter-Tilney Add to myFT

International Edition

We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article.

Super Trouper

Baillie Walsh, the mastermind behind ABBA Voyage, the blockbuster “virtual concert” in London, on the making of a game-changing spectacular, the future of live performance, plus his own amazing adventures in the worlds of pop, performance, music and film

The British film director Baillie Walsh is a man of many parts. He broke through as a director of music videos, initially with Boy George and then the Bristol trip hop collective Massive Attack, for whom he made the promo for the magnificent “Unfinished Sympathy”, from their era-defining 1991 album, Blue Lines. Later he directed memorable videos for Kylie Minogue, INXS, New Order and Oasis.

Walsh has made numerous award-winning commercials; acclaimed shorts; documentaries about music ( Springsteen & I ); and about filmmaking ( Being James Bond: The Daniel Craig Story ). He has written and directed a feature film, 2008’s Flashbacks of a Fool , starring that same Daniel Craig as a faded Hollywood star — narcissistic, hedonistic — forced to confront his past in 1970s Britain. (Don’t worry, Daniel, it’ll never happen!) For the finale of an Alexander McQueen fashion show, in Paris in 2006, he created a hologram of Kate Moss. I was in the audience for that show. It was beautiful, ghostly, and oddly moving.

Testimonials from prominent collaborators are not hard to come by. Moss, no slouch herself in this department, talks about his “sense of style and incredible taste.” Kylie mentions his incredible “capacity to convey emotion.”

“At his heart,” says Daniel Craig, “Baillie is a showman. The incredibly hard work that goes into all his projects is for one purpose: to move an audience, to give them a totally new experience, to affect them emotionally and spiritually and send them away with smiles on their faces.”

All of which could accurately be said of the 62-year-old’s latest project. It is perhaps his most high profile, and ground-breaking, to date. ABBA Voyage, which embarks seven times a week, including matinees, from the purpose-built, 3,000-capacity, spaceship-like ABBA Arena in Stratford, east London, opened in May to reviews that might reasonably be characterised as ecstatic. “Jaw-dropping,” marvelled the Guardian . “Mind-blowing,” panted the Telegraph .

I saw the show in early July. It is that rare thing: an event that exceeds its hype. It is, not to sound too fulsome, an astonishment. It is, also, a potential game-changer for the music industry and even for the idea of “live performance” — whatever that means after one has seen it.

ABBA Voyage has been described as a “virtual concert”. The former members of one of the most beloved and successful pop groups of all time — that is, Agnetha Faitskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad — do not appear on stage in person. But they do appear. (ABBA disbanded in 1982; although they reconstituted the group five years ago, and have since released new music, it’s been over four decades since they gave a public concert.)

Instead of flesh and blood ABBA, the show is performed by life-sized, animated CGI avatars of the four members, restored by technology to their pop star primes. (ABBAtars, the producers call them.) But it’s also performed by the real ABBA, in the sense that they sang the songs, and danced the dances, in a studio in Sweden, and motion-capture technology allowed those performances — the singing, the dancing, even the chat between the songs — to be combined, on “stage”, with a live 10-piece band and a spectacular light show. The effect is uncanny. It’s not quite correct to say one feels oneself to be present at an ABBA concert in 1979. You are aware (just about, and sometimes not even) that it is 2022, and that in real life the members of ABBA don’t look like that anymore. But you are also conscious that you have entered another world — a virtual world, which is not to say you’re not in it — where you can be thrilled and moved by the power and beauty of some of the most familiar songs in the pop canon, those gorgeous, melancholic bangers that only those four people, together, could have made. The show might be virtual, but the feelings it evokes are genuine. I know, I felt them.

ABBA Voyage benefits from the talents of thousands of technicians and creatives: among others, a huge team from Industrial Light & Magic, the Hollywood visual effects powerhouse; the brilliant British choreographer Wayne McGregor; Swedish costume designer B Akerlund, whose clever modernising of the band’s stage wardrobes gives the show its convincing retro-contemporary feel; the live band; producers Ludwig Andersson and Svana Gisla. But if the Voyage is a trip, and it certainly is, then Baillie Walsh is the man at the controls.

Slim, tanned, and handsome behind dark glasses — so youthful, in fact, that one wonders if this is really him, or a CGI avatar of his younger self? — Walsh arrives on the dot for his Esquire interview, at a hotel in Soho on a Tuesday morning (he lives just around the corner), orders a cup of English breakfast tea and settles himself at a quiet table. He talks for close to two hours, with barely a pause: about ABBA, avatars, his three decades and counting in film and music, and his own extraordinary backstory, from teenage tearaway to Top of the Pops and beyond…

The conversation below, as they say, has been edited and condensed. (A lot.)

Let’s start with how you got involved with the ABBA project. What happened?

One of the producers, Svana Gisla, I’ve worked with many times. I made Springsteen & I with her. A Kylie video, an Oasis film. And she was working with [Swedish director] Johan Renck on this project, and then he had this enormous success with [acclaimed HBO series] Chernobyl . So he saw a film opportunity and didn’t want to do this. [Raised eyebrow.]

Lucky for you!

Lucky for me. I had a Zoom call with Benny and Bjorn and they said yes on that call. That’s where it all began, three years ago.

How far developed was the idea when you signed up?

Johan had done a road map and there was a set list, which came from ABBA. But it was a very rough idea. They knew they wanted to make younger versions of themselves, that was ABBA’s idea. Whether that was going to be holograms or whatever, that was still up for grabs. So I came on board and there was a gradual process of: “What is this thing going to be?” The creative process on something like this is long, because it’s so big. You’re not doing one song. You’re asking, “What is this monster, what can it be?” So, my first job was to sit down and think about what I would want to go and see. I always played it like that. Then it was about talking to ILM about what would be possible. Ben Morris, the creative director there, was really brilliant to work with. And he loved the challenge, the idea of having life-sized avatars, and wanting to feel like they are really there .

Was there a Eureka moment where you said, “I know what this should be! It’s a live concert given by CGI performers!”

There was a few. When I realised, first of all, they have to be life-sized, that the audience has to feel like they are there. I knew it wasn’t going to be holograms. Holograms are so limiting, in the sense that you can’t light them. So then it was, “What does that mean?” We want life-size avatars but we want to see them really big, in detail, like you have at a concert, with the big screens. So we want those iMAG screens.

IMAG screens, for those of us who don’t know…

Those big screens, so when you go to see Beyonce, and she’s the size of a bean, you can see her close-up. But this isn’t the O2, where you’re so far away you can’t see or hear or feel what’s going on.

Your arena is much smaller than that.

That’s part of the success of the thing, I think, that arena. It’s really quite intimate. You can see every face in there, and the excitement spreads. I mean, there are many reasons for the success of this, so far. Lots of magic has happened. I’m a part of that, but the fact that it’s ABBA, the fact that they are still alive, and contributed enormously to this, and their soul is in this. The fact that they haven’t toured for 40 years, so there’s a great hunger to see them live, in whatever form. The arena, which is the perfect size, I think. And also so well designed, so comfortable. It doesn’t feel like you’re going to a horrible, beer-stinking arena, with turnstiles. From the moment you arrive, it’s already exciting. Like, “What the hell is this ?”

Because it could have been a disaster.

Yes. It could have been a disaster, so easily.

Because it’s a very weird idea.

Yes! Totally. The whole thing I fought against is the tech, being led by the tech. The tech should be the least important thing. The important thing is the emotion. I want people to laugh, dance, cry. And you’ve got to be really careful with that. It’s multi-layered, because you are playing with the past, the present and future. And all of those big questions. You can’t throw that in people’s faces. The concert isn’t a big intellectual idea. And I never tried to intellectualise it. But I knew there were lots of big ideas under the surface.

There’s a lightness of touch to it that’s very appealing. And, of course, in the moment, unless you’re weird, you are not trying to deconstruct it. You’re just enjoying yourself. But afterwards I certainly was provoked to think about mortality, ageing, nostalgia…

But you can’t be heavy handed with those things. All I ever thought was, if I’m feeling emotion, if the ideas for presenting the songs resonate with me, then I’m on to something. Because I am the audience. So if it chokes me up, it’s going to choke everyone else up.

There are some people who feel that emotion stimulated by technology is somehow cheaper. That it’s inauthentic, in some way. That a concert given by avatars is fake.

The interesting challenge was: how can we fall in love with an avatar? That was the challenge. I wanted to do that, to fall in love with an avatar. And I did! The soul of ABBA is in those avatars. Their voices, those speeches, everything they say, the soul is there. It’s irrelevant that it’s an avatar. I mean, it’s helped by the fact that it’s ABBA, and their music is very emotive. That’s a massive advantage. If it had been Black Sabbath, it would have been harder to fall in love with the avatars. But ABBA’s songs, everyone has a connection to those songs. They are part of our DNA. They are part of who we are.

Talk a bit about the process of creating the avatars. How did you do it?

Basically, we were in a studio in Sweden for five weeks, with ABBA. And we filmed them with 160 cameras, in motion-capture suits. We went through the whole set list, and more, and they performed those songs for the cameras. It was a very bizarre, amazing experience. You’re in this kind of NASA-style studio, with monitors and cameras everywhere, and 100 people in there taking all the data. A very bizarre situation. As individuals they are really lovely people, but the moment you bring those four people together, something happens. This strange alchemy. Which is a really rare thing. I mean, I’m sure it happens when the Stones come together, or when the Beatles came together. This extraordinary energy. I don’t want to get all woo-woo about it. But it’s perceptible. When they came together on that stage, on the first day, it’s goosebumps. It’s a magical thing. And that’s why I feel so lucky to have got this gig and to have been able to do what I’ve done, with ABBA. I can’t think of another band who would be better than them for this project. I’m spoilt now. I’m fucked, really. I’ve made something that hasn’t been done before, which is a really rare opportunity. How am I gonna top this?

That was going to be my last question. I was going to leave your existential crisis for later.

Now that you mention it though…

I haven’t had time to think about it. I’ve been on this project for three years and I’ve had four days off. I finish on Thursday and go to Iceland on Saturday.

For a holiday?

I’ve got a house there. This’ll be the first time I’ve been in three years, but it’s where I go and spend time alone. I look at nature, and look at sky, and go fishing, and it’s good for my head. I’m not quite sure how it’s going to work this time. I’m expecting an enormous crash.

Clearly, you’re going to have a terrible time.

Terrible! It’s going to be awful. No, but I have just had the best job that I’ll probably ever have. I hope that’s not true. But I think it’s the best job I’ve ever done. I’ve worked for a very long time and there are peaks and troughs. But the scale of this is what makes me most proud. It’s big!

It feels game-changing in many ways, and it does open a Pandora’s box. What does this mean for live performance? What does it mean for musicians? For audiences? Could you do it with the Stones? What would it mean if you did?

Of course you could. Charlie [Watts] isn’t around, so you’re going to miss that. But yes, you could.

You couldn’t do it with Prince, for example, presumably because you can’t do the motion-capture part?

No, but you could do it. Especially with the way technology is moving. You could do it posthumously. But one of the things that is great about what we’ve been able to do is, we’ve been able to update ABBA. It’s not just nostalgia. It’s past, present and future. It’s about being able to reinvent ABBA for 2022. It’s not about recreating the 1979 Wembley concert. That wouldn’t be interesting. You can watch that on YouTube.

What about the Stones, then? Would it be desirable to do this with them?

That’s not for me to say. It’s not desirable for me. Because I think I’ve had the best band to do this with. The Stones have been on tour since year dot. They’re still on tour now. Of course, it would be exciting to see Mick in his heyday. But Mick is still so great live, at 78. Unbelievable. Not only running about the stage, but singing at the same time! I can’t walk and speak! He’s still doing it, and that’s what you want to see, with the Stones.

There are ethical concerns, too. Especially the idea of doing it with dead people.

Well, Whitney! They made a hologram of her. I didn’t see it. I saw bits of it on YouTube. But the first word that comes to mind is “grotesque.” Because that’s just a money-making exercise.

Is this going to be rolled out to other countries?

Yeah, I think so. You could do Vegas, you could do New York.

Will you be involved in those?

I hope so. This is my baby and the idea that someone else is going to take it and remodel it in some way that I found really annoying… I hope I am involved. Maybe we can add something to this that will knock people’s socks off even more? Because we do have the ability to change the show. We recorded more songs, filmed more songs. Maybe we can improve it?

One more question on the ethics of it. If a contemporary artist came to you, say Beyonce, and asked you to do the same for her as you’ve done for ABBA, to put on a virtual Beyonce concert that could play every night of the week in cities around the world, forever, and she need never leave the house again, would you? Because that idea worries people who love live music.

Yes, but I think they shouldn’t worry. Because first of all, Beyonce loves to perform. She’s not going to stop, because she is a genius performer. That’s who she is. That’s her being. And I don’t think this is going to replace anything. It’s part of the entertainment world now. But people want to see live concerts, and people still want to perform them. You think Bruce Springsteen is going to stop touring because he could do a virtual show? His life is touring. And most of those people who perform, it’s who they are. The Stones don’t want to sit at home with their feet up! They want to be on stage. They love that adoration. Who wouldn’t? 100,000 people screaming that they love you? Gimme more! So I don’t think people should be worried. They should be excited. And it’s not just music. The idea of how theatre can use this. The immersive quality of it. That thing about not knowing where the real world ends and the digital world begins. All that is really interesting. I want to see what other people do with it. I want to be excited and blown away and confused. I really look forward to seeing where it goes.

You live round the corner from here. Did you grow up in London?

I was born in London and then moved to Essex when I was young. And brought up there, all around Clacton-on-Sea, those terrible seaside towns. Working on Clacton pier, being a bingo caller, that was the start of my showbiz journey.

Do you come from a showbiz family?

No. My mum was a pharmacist, my dad was a rogue, a gambler, with all of the disaster that brings. And my mother brought up three kids on her own, pretty much. I have an older brother and a younger sister.

What kind of boy were you?

I was a rogue, too, a runaway. At the age of 14 I ran away for a month, and was in London with my friend. Can you imagine?

What were you doing?

Stealing. Shoplifting from Portobello antique shops and selling it on the Market. I was a terrible, horrible child.

Where were you living?

At the Venus Hotel on Portobello Road, with my friend’s sister. She had two children and she lived in one room in the hotel, and we lived there too. But I got caught, in the end, and put into a home, a halfway borstal. And that fixed me. I was only a couple of weeks but it scared the life out of me. And then I decided, somehow, I was going to go to art school. I was always in trouble at school, for fighting, but this teacher picked up on the fact I had some kind of talent and nurtured me, and I got into Colchester art school, doing graphics.

When was this?

I was there from 1976 to 79.

During punk.

Yeah. But I wasn’t a punk. I was more of a soul boy. It was [famous Essex soul club] Lacy Lady for me.

And after you finished art school?

Well, I didn’t want to be a graphic designer. I didn’t want to be trapped behind a desk. It wasn’t for me. Back in those days you didn’t think about a career. I just went on the adventure. I became a coin dealer, by accident.

How does a person become a coin dealer by accident?

It was when there was a gold rush on. We used to set up in hotels and buy gold and silver by weight, and the person whose business this was, was a coin dealer. I knew nothing about coins. But the great thing about it was, we travelled all over the world. And of course, I’d never travelled. I was 19, 20, and I moved to California. And I got bored of that after six months, came back to London for a holiday, and I got a job dancing with the girls at the [legendary Soho strip club] Raymond Revue Bar. Basically, erotic dancing.

Hang on. You need to explain this.

OK. So, I was staying in this really crummy flat where there was newspaper on the kitchen floor. And I saw an advert there for people willing to appear naked on stage. And I thought, “I could never do that.” So: great, you’re gonna do it. Things that are fearful, you do them. I love that. That’s the whole thing about being creative. I love to be shit-scared. So I called up and I got the job.

Did you have to audition?

You had to take all your clothes off and dance around?

The first audition was just take your clothes off and stand and pose and turn around for the choreographer, Gerard. And I later went to visit him at his flat on Charing Cross Road. And there’s this bay window that looks out onto the National Portrait Gallery, the Garrick Theatre, the neon lights, I’m 20 years old, and it’s like, “This is the best flat in the world!” And the dancer I took over from had the flat upstairs, so he moved out and I moved in, and I still live there today. I’ve been there 40 years, my whole adult life. And I think I might stay.

So the Raymond Revue Bar…

My first taste of showbiz!

It’s a load of girls getting their kit off on stage and…

Yeah, you’re a prop. You’re naked, and you have simulated sex. There’s a scene. You’d come out and pretend to play tennis, and then the music would change and suddenly it would be a sauna scene, and there’s a bench, and the lights change and you’re pretending to throw water over the girls… It was a real experience. I never got used to it. The audience are men. They want to see naked girls. They’re not happy when they see you up there.

How long did this last?

About a year? And while I was working there, I met Antony Price, at the Camden Palace. And he became my first boyfriend.

And Antony Price, for those who don’t know, was an important fashion designer…

The designer for Roxy Music. He was a real hero of mine when I was a kid. When I was 14. All those album covers, all those clothes… And because I was a dancer, Antony asked me to stage his fashion show, at the Camden Palace. So at the age of 21, I did that. At the time it was a really big deal.

Your first directing job.

Yes. I learned so much from that, and from him. His style and taste and knowledge of film and music. Just an unbelievable man.

Was that the end of your career as an erotic dancer?

Well, then I became a model. That was great. Modelling gave me the chance to try lots of things and meet lots of people. And I was successful. Modelling was a different world then. I made a living from it for a reasonable amount of time. I enjoyed it for a while, then it gets dull. It becomes a job. The glamour wears thin. And then I was getting dancing jobs as well. You know, dancing with Bananarama.

I don’t know! Tell me about dancing with Bananarama. When was that?

1987, I think. I got a call from [now famous Strictly judge] Bruno Tonioli saying, “Do you want to dance on Top of the Pops ?” So, I went, “Lifelong ambition!” So, me, Bruno, and his boyfriend then, Paul, were the backing dancers for Bananarama on Top of the Pops .

Which song?

“I Heard a Rumour.”

I’ll look it up on YouTube.

You should. [I did. The trio certainly carry off their cycling shorts.]

When does the film directing start?

At the age of 25 I saw 1900 , the Bertolucci film. And that blew my head off. I just thought, I want to do that.

What was it about that film?

Just the epic quality, the skill in the filmmaking, the beauty, the emotion, the characters, the storytelling… it had everything. Now, I’m never going to make a film like 1900 , but I started making little films with my mates. Super 8 and video cameras. And then I made one video in 1987, with [performance artist, nightclub legend, fashion icon] Leigh Bowery, who was a great mate.

You knew these people through nightclubs, that amazing scene in London in the 1980s?

Yes, exactly.

Were you a Blitz kid?

No, after that. Taboo, Leigh’s club, in Leicester Square, that was the best for me. That was the summit of my nightlife.

It’s always striking, that so many influential creative people came from that very select, underground world.

Everybody was there. [Film director] John Maybury was my boyfriend at that time. I went out with John for 17 years. I learnt a lot from him. They were amazing times.

All the most important future fashion designers and photographers and artists and filmmakers and pop stars in one room in London, dancing. It's hard to imagine this happening now…

Because of social media, I suppose. People are on their phones all the time. They don’t go out anymore. It’s one important point about the ABBA show [which insists the audience switch off their phones.] I had to really fight for that. Because otherwise they spend the whole concert filming it.

People can’t process a show, or anything else, unless they mediate it themselves.

It’s just like, “What the fuck are you doing?” It’s such madness.

You wonder what people think they are going to do with all that footage. What’s it for?

I know. Is it about ownership? “Look, I filmed this!”

So the ABBA phones policy came from that?

Yes, for all those reasons. But it was a very contentious idea. Lots of the suits, they disagree. They think that’s what everyone wants. I said, no, nobody wants that. They want to experience the show. They don’t want it ruined. The moment you put a phone up, everything’s abstract. You’re not in the moment. It’s insane. Stop!

So back to the career. You’re making a film with Leigh Bowery.

Yes, I wanted to make a pop video. So I made a track, a series of samples, called “Boys”. And Leigh is the lead in it. And Boy George saw it. This was ’87. And he asked me to make a video for him. And that was it, I was away. I made one called “After the Love”, and then “Generations of Love”, in 1990. That changed everything for me, because Massive Attack saw it. Basically it was the story of Soho, at that time. Thatcher had been in power for a long time. I was just seeing homeless people everywhere. It was really bad. So I got all my mates dressed up in drag, as prostitutes. Leigh styled it. I made a porn film, so we could project it for a scene inside one of the porn cinemas. I went and presented it at Virgin, and persuaded them. They paid the bill. And the next week I got a letter saying if you EVER show this film anywhere, we’ll sue you. But I got away with it. And it was a calling card. I still think it’s my best video. I have such fond memories of it.

And that’s what got you Massive Attack.

What a gift! To be given that album. I got the first four singles. Goosebumps, immediately, “Unfinished Sympathy” is one of my favourite songs ever, still. So beautiful. Extraordinary. And because they were the biggest band of that year, and I was associated with them, suddenly I had a career. Hate that word, career. I had the possibility of a working life, of becoming a director, I was up and running.

"Unfinished Sympathy" was such a distinctive video: one take, [the singer] Shara Nelson walking through Downtown LA, apparently oblivious to everything around her. And that’s it.

It hadn’t been done before. I wanted to challenge myself, I wanted to be scared. “Can I do this?”

It’s the antithesis of one of those videos that’s all about trying to sell the image of the star, the band.

But the song gave me this. That thing of when you are really hurt, and you are walking down the street and you are completely and utterly within yourself. You are not noticing anything that’s going on around you. We’ve all been there, right? Just destroyed by love. I wanted it to be that unbroken thought. This inner voice. That came from the music. But at the same time I was very aware that I was going against the tide, which I knew was a really good idea. Always a good idea. Because every [other] video at the time, it was [director] David Fincher, and it was all about fast-cuts.

His stuff with Madonna?

Yeah, it was all fast cuts. Make it as bright and shiny and fast-cutty as you can. And I’m sorry but “Vogue” is a fucking genius video. And David Fincher did it very well. But we went against the grain, made it really gritty. And Massive Attack’s music always smelt American to me. It sounded so big, so epic. I really wanted an international visual language for them. Take it away from Bristol, from the UK. So Downtown LA. In fact, the first video I did for them was “Daydreaming”, which I set in the Deep South. But yes, opportunities were coming thick and fast at that time.

You were very successful for a while.

Yeah. I only made thirteen videos. And then the world changed, budgets shrank, the demands from the record companies grew. And I thought, if you want me to basically make advertising, I’ll go off and make a ton of money doing that.

Which is what you did.

It’s what I did. I don’t say I made a ton of money but I earned a living. And the great thing about advertising, as nasty as it can be, is that you get to hone your craft. You’re filming, you’re on a set, you’re working with people. That’s really important, because making films is next to impossible, right? I’ve never been lucky at that.

Was it always in your mind, throughout the Eighties and the Nineties and beyond, to make a feature film?

Always. Always to make movies. And I wrote many and nearly got them made and spent years trying, as you do with films.

And, finally, you got there, with Flashbacks of a Fool .

Yes. And there were really good things about that and really bad things about that. The great thing was, I wrote that for Daniel Craig before he was Bond, right? We’re mates. And he still wanted to make it after he became Bond, which was wonderful. Because that meant all the effort that I’d made when I tried to get it made before he was Bond, and failed, had not been wasted. When he became Bond that gave him enormous power. He could get anything made. And he was generous enough to sprinkle some of that glitter on to me, and to allow me to make that film. The trouble with that is, that this small art film is then sold as a Bond film. Which is a disaster. Because if you deceive an audience, they don’t like it. You can’t sell candyfloss as popcorn. People want to know what they’re buying, so when it’s released as a fucking Bond film, and it’s a small little art film that should be in two cinemas and possibly grow from there, it’s a disaster. And critics don’t like it, either. No one likes it. I still have a fondness for Flashbacks , but I was really hurt by the response to it. When you put that much heart and soul into something, and you have a joyous time making it, and it’s received with a shrug of the shoulders and a “whatever”, it’s tough. The opposite to what the ABBA thing has been. This is all five stars. Every review. I’ll never have reviews like this again. But the reviews for Flashbacks knocked me, they knocked my confidence. I doubted myself. I felt misunderstood. It was really, really annoying. “No one understands me!”

How did you recover from that?

Well, cut to two years later, someone sends me a link to Flashbacks on YouTube and I read the reviews on there. It blew me away. Floods of tears. Because what I wanted, it did happen, people did get it. So I’m not saying the film is a success, or good. But the response I wanted did happen, and that was a beautiful thing. So I’m really fond of the film. I know it’s flawed but I think there are great moments in it, and I learnt from it. I would love the opportunity to make another feature film. I still have that ambition. Even though film now, somehow, has really lost its lustre. It’s really shocking.

Why is that?

The demise of Weinstein, I think. It died with Weinstein. It was dying anyway, but that finished it off. Because when he was at his pinnacle, the monster that he was, but how fucking great were the films? And the stars! Now, apart from Tom Cruise, there are no movie stars left.

The independent film scene in the Nineties and Noughties was rocking.

It was so exciting. And it’s gone. It’s such a tragedy, obviously, that Harvey was such a monster. Not only for the obvious reasons, for the people affected by his behaviour, which is a tragedy. But also for cinema. Now, the world’s a different place. That was the zeitgeist, that was the time. And now cinema is not nearly as interesting as it was. So yes, I do want to make films, but the idea of making an arthouse movie and going to Poland to show it at a fucking festival, is not interesting. I want people to see it!

What about TV, where all the action is? Is that appealing?

Yeah, I have a TV series I’d love to make. It’s called Pussycat Lounge, based on my year at the Raymond Revue Bar. Set in that period. [Production company] Tiger Aspect had it. That didn’t go very well. Got it back from them. And right now no one is interested. I think that because I do so many different things, it’s kind of hard to place me.

You’re a victim of your own versatility?

Maybe. I always try to treat everything I do with the same enthusiasm. I don’t think there’s a difference between all these things [videos, and films, and shows]. But people in Hollywood don’t think like that. They want you to repeat everything. We all know that.

They would rather you did another ABBA Voyage than made a TV show.

Exactly. Although having said that, I do love putting on a live show, seeing people’s reactions, having an adoring crowd. And it also seems to me that this golden age of TV is coming to an end, too. Five years ago, every director wanted a TV show. Now it feels like that’s dying. There’s too much stuff, right? I’m just overwhelmed when I go on to Netflix. That was the great thing about growing up in my period: you had to wait for the single to come out. You had to wait for Top of the Pops on Thursday, to see that performance. Now we’re just fucking overwhelmed.

Not least by social media. We’re all on our phones.

I think social media is a terrible thing, I don’t do any of it. It’s just noise. I think it’s the least creative thing ever. And if I was on it, because I’m obsessive, I would want to do it well, and that’s a full-time job. It’s all-consuming. I wouldn’t have made [the ABBA] show if I was on social media. I wouldn’t have had time!

Also, don’t know about you but I have never been moved by a post on Instagram. I have never been enlightened by a Tweet. These aren’t media where we can really connect deeply with other people.

No! It’s impossible. I’m suspicious of all posts. They all have a motive. They aren’t gifts. They’re not about anything but the person who sends them. It’s all about you . And, actually, fuck off!

A lot of stuff seems to be dying. I saw Glastonbury on TV. It was Noel Gallagher, Paul McCartney…

And Diana Ross! Fucking geriatric. Torture, it was torture! Although I had to watch the Pet Shop Boys, because I know them. And you know what? They were fucking great. Like, “OK! Now we’re cooking!”

The risk is, we end up sounding like a grumpy old men.

But I am! And it’s hard to be excited about anything when there’s too much stuff.

Which brings us back to the ABBA show.

It’s exciting because it doesn’t feel like anything else. It’s different. It’s a miracle! Seeing the joy drip off the walls of that arena, it’s unbelievable.

So what’s next?

A holiday. And because I’ve thought of nothing else for three years other than ABBA, I need to take a breath, and be quiet, and think. Like I was saying, I’ve been really spoilt, with this project. What’s next? The thing is, in a way it’s not for me to say. All these opportunities that have come my way, people have given them to me. A lot of them, I haven’t gone searching for them. So what’s next is, wait for the next job to be offered.

That sounds both admirably zen, and also a little terrifying. What if nothing comes along?

Something always has. Alex, I’ve done this for 30 years or more. There are times when I’m really popular, and times when I can’t get arrested. That can go on for years. There have been times when I haven’t worked at all for two years. Because I couldn’t get a job. But that’s the nature of my business. You’re in and out of fashion. You do something that gets lots of attention and you’ll get work for a couple of years, maybe. And then it stops again. You do the best you can. You might do quiet work for a bit. A commercial that’s only shown in China. To earn a living. And you wait for an opportunity.

For a couple of weeks, I’ve got opportunities.

And you’re going to disappear to Iceland?!

They know where to find me. But, no, the ABBA show is going to roll out all over the world, right? That’ll give me some longevity. And by that point I’ll be dead anyway. So, I’m not fretting.

@media(max-width: 73.75rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.4375rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.5625rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}} Culture

‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Episode 1 Recap

Ewan Mitchell Likes Playing a Psychopath

Mike Faist: “Honestly, Who Cares About Acting?”

Everything We Know About 'The Handmaid's Tale' S6

Everything We Know About Big Little Lies Season 3

The Biggest TV Shows of 2024

The Best Movies of 2024

Who Killed Carolyn In ‘Presumed Innocent’?

Every Richard Linklater Movie, Ranked

'Presumed Innocent' is Exceedingly... Watchable

What to Do in London This Weekend

Euros 2024 – Articles

Peek behind the scenes of the Abba Voyage show and its stunning visual effects

Share this with

Earlier this week, I was among the first, lucky few to watch the spotlit figures of Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad rise from the stage floor of the custom-built Abba Arena to rapturous applause.

What was easy to forget in the moment of the spectacle was that the Abba members I was staring at weren’t real. Of course, this is physically evident, given the famous four here resemble their much younger selves while dressed in ’70s sequinned ensembles.

Yet despite knowing the Swedish pop legends have been immortalised in avatar form, the realism is hard to ignore.

Little details, such as the convincing way the light glistens on sequins, the fluid hair movement and those signature simple dance moves up and down the stage, mean you have to keep reminding yourself that the famous four aren’t actually in the room.

The 90-minute show is both a futuristic marvel and a nostalgic time capsule for Abba fans both young and new. Their highly anticipated return not only kicks off a 196-show residency, it also shows off the latest technological advances in musical immortality and an incredible feat of visual effects.

But how is it all done?

Visual trickery

Despite what you might have read, these are not holograms. Instead, we’re told, they are three- dimensional avatars displayed on a flat screen.

The brains behind the Abba-tars, as they are more playfully known, are the folk at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), the special effects company founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas, which has worked on projects including Jurassic Park and the Marvel films.

With about 1,000 visual effects artists working on the Abba show, the ILM team has spent months painstakingly creating digital versions of the band through cutting-edge motion-capture technology and performance techniques.

Hundreds of hours have been spent on each band member performing and being recorded by 200 cameras from dozens of angles, all while wearing motion-capture suits.

‘As you might imagine, creating realistic digital humans that can perform consistently for the duration of a concert is still a very complex and time-consuming process,’ says creative director Ben Morris.

‘First we build a very accurate static model of each “present-day” Abba’s face, based on 3D scan data. This model is then animated using ILM’s proprietary performance capture tool sets, many of which are developed in collaboration with our colleagues at Disney Research Studios in Zurich.

‘Following this initial procedural step, our global team of animators refines final details and ensures consistency over the entire duration of each song.’

It’s no secret that when you’re in your seventies you can’t dance around like you did when you were in your thirties. That explains why a highly trained group of younger performers were brought in to capture body performances and provide the more physically demanding and dynamic movements of the avatars.

‘Alongside these processes we started creating our younger digital Abba faces and bodies using every available piece of archival material we could find’, adds Morris.

‘The challenging part is when we start to transfer the moving face and body performances from our present-day performers to the younger digital Abba-tars. If we didn’t match the performance correspondences exactly, our Abba-tars would instantly fall off-model, something we aimed to avoid.’

To top things off, they’ve also created some of the most complex digital costumes ever put on screen. ‘Our digital costumers painstakingly recreated countless couture outfits that were all based on real outfits designed by a number of famous design houses specifically for this project,’ says Morris.

‘Every stitch and sequin was duplicated in exacting detail and then run through a series of computer simulations to ensure it reacted to body movement precisely as it would do on the live performer.’

The hard work has certainly paid off: the result is four very convincing life-size 3D images performing on stage, alongside a ten-piece live band, that absolutely appear as if they are Abba in the flesh.

Arena effects

It’s not just about watching Abba’s digital twins on stage, though. A very large kinetic system, for example, controls moving mirrors, lasers and lighting. The audio system completely envelops you with the auditorium’s 291 speakers.

With the essence of the show being to ultimately integrate the physical with the digital, the unique thing about the production is having to design the physicality of the shows (the lighting and the special effects) way in advance.

This is so ILM could film each individual instrument, take their colour temperatures and reproduce the actual light or laser source, or other effects, then subsequently create that in the digital world. The aim of that is to make one blend into the other so it appears as though the Abba-tars are performing in the same physicality.

‘It’s very unusual to have to design in detail every aspect of the show or the lighting and all the special effects, and integrate those before we’ve even gotten into a rehearsal situation,’ says technical director Nick Page.

Making the arena

Taking place inside a purpose-built 3,000-capacity venue at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, the show was literally built from the ground up and ran in parallel as the production developed. The brains behind the hexagonal arena is British architecture company Stufish, which has installed shows for Beyoncé and the Rolling Stones.

‘It was a huge benefit, having the opportunity to design the venue,’ says Morris. ‘With so many complex creative technologies coming together to create the blend between virtual and real worlds, it was essential we could tailor the building to exactly fit our unique requirements.’

The mix of music and tech provides a realistic performance and means you’re immersed. You don’t have to be at a certain angle in the arena to enjoy it, either: the seating arrangements have been developed to give the best viewpoints wherever you’re sitting.

The goal on this project was ‘to achieve a shared human experience where the audience believes the arena and virtual space are one seamless real world space’. We can happily confirm that the team behind the show have achieved exactly that.

Tickets start at £21, from the Abba Voyage website .

MORE : Abba Voyage: Groundbreaking hologram experience is absolutely magic

MORE : Abba reunite in London for first time in 40 years and my, my, just how much we’ve missed them!

MORE : When are the ABBA Voyage tour 2022 dates and can you still get tickets?

Get us in your feed

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! AI after midnight: Firm behind London ABBA Voyage in £8.1m tech swoop

By: Jennifer Sieg

SME Reporter

• Facebook Share on Facebook
• X Share on Twitter
• LinkedIn Share on LinkedIn
• WhatsApp Share on WhatsApp

Oxford Metrics, the firm and technology used for ABBA Voyage, has today announced it has entered into a £8.1m acquisition agreement for AI software company Industrial Vision Systems (IVS).

IVS is known for its  automated quality control systems used across various industries and will be a “good strategic fit,” Oxford Metrics said.

The group, whose technology has enabled London’s holographic Abba Voyage experience, will use the acquisition to further expand on already in-use technology services to offer more worldwide.

As of mid-day Wednesday, Oxford Metrics’ share price was up 2.7 per cent to 89p per share.

Chief executive of Oxford Metrics Imogen Moorhouse said the announcement strengthens the company’s “sense, analyse and apply strategy.”

She added: “Through its cutting-edge machine vision solutions, IVS replaces traditional inspection methods with smart sensing. This results in faster, more reliable, and highly accurate results, providing well-known brands with the latest machine vision automation.”

IVS co-founders, Earl Yardley and Andrew Waller, said Oxford Metrics is the only “home” that was under consideration for IVS as it holds the same culture and value, along with a track record of success.

“We are on a mission to make companies more efficient, highly flexible and quicker with our machine solutions. As part of Oxford Metrics, we will continue to develop and broaden our technology offering with an ongoing focus on innovation and research & development,” they said.

Subscribe to the City A.M. newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Your news your way

Subscribe to get the essential daily news updates from City A.M's top stories to your inbox.

What is ABBA Voyage? How 'hologram' concert works in specially built arena

ABBA are launching their ground-breaking ABBA Voyage concert today, which will see the lines between digital and reality blurred as the Swedish pop band perform as digital avatars in a special built arena

• 10:39, 27 May 2022
• Updated 15:29, 27 May 2022

It’s been over four decades since their last tour, but ABBA are returning to the stage (sort of) for their ABBA Voyage concerts.

In actual fact, the members of ABBA won’t be appearing on stage themselves, instead they’ll be appearing as digital avatars.

Last year, the iconic Swedish pop group released their first studio album since the release of The Visitors in 1981.

Their ninth studio album, titled ABBA Voyage , sold over a million copies within its first week worldwide, and has received more than 190 million combined streams to date.

Now the pop group are hosting a ground-breaking concert following their return to music.

Here’s everything you need to know about ABBA Voyage.

What is the ABBA Voyage concert?

The ABBA Voyage concert is ABBA’s brand new concert that will see fans experiencing the pop group in a performance like no other.

Agnetha, Björn , Benny and Anni-Frid will appear digitally to perform for thousands of fans.

The ABBA Voyage concerts start today (Friday May 27) and will run until at least December 2022.

A custom-built arena, named the ABBA Arena, has been built specially for the shows at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.

The 90-minute concert will feature a setlist of ABBA’s hit songs, including tracks from their recent ABBA Voyage album.

How does ABBA Voyage work?

ABBA’s “hologram” concert is not actually a hologram concert at all, but it is the first of its kind as it blurs the lines between physical and digital.

A hologram is a virtual three-dimensional image, but the show’s producers have said this isn’t what they’re using for the concert.

Last year, producer Svana Gisla told Dazed: “We’re not making three-dimensional holograms.

“I don’t think any hologram shows have been successful. After five minutes, I don’t think they’re that interesting.”

Instead, they’ve made avatars, nicknamed ABBAtars, to appear as digital versions of Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid.

The ABBAtars will appear on a 65million pixel screen and will bring the Swedish pop legends to life using the latest in motion capture technology.

The concert has been six years in the making. To create their digital selves, the band performed in motion capture suits for five weeks while 160 cameras scanned their body movement and facial expressions.

The ground-breaking technology used will allow the ABBAtars to take concertgoers back in time as they depict the group just as they appeared in 1977.

The ABBAtars will perform alongside 10 live musicians who will help bring the concert to life.

MORE ON Abba

Celeb obsessed get a daily dose of showbiz gossip direct to your inbox.

Rise of the ABBA-tars! Inside ABBA’s Groundbreaking Live Residency

By Brittany Spanos

Brittany Spanos

After they broke up four decades ago, ABBA famously refused all kinds of money for reunion ABBA-tars and performances. But a few years ago, British entrepreneur Simon Fuller pitched an idea that piqued the Swedish superstars’ interest. “We got sort of turned on by the thought that we could actually be onstage without us being there,” ABBA singer-songwriter Benny Andersson says over Zoom.

The band, along with Fuller and their producers Ludvig Andersson (Benny Andersson’s son) and Svana Gisla (music-video producer for the likes of Radiohead and Beyoncé), initially explored reproducing themselves by hologram technology, but that didn’t pan out. ABBA finally realized a grander dream: ABBA Voyage, the concert residency at newly built ABBA Arena in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park that begins May 27.

Made with help from George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, digital avatars (also known as ABBA-tars) embody the stars in their Seventies prime, performing a 22-song set alongside a flesh-and-blood backing band assembled by James Righton of the Klaxons and including U.K. singer Little Boots on keys. “It’s been a lot of uphill,” the elder Andersson says. “Brexit, the pandemic. It’s been a lot of stuff that hasn’t worked well, but we’ve been resilient.”

The band and the team and ILM realized early on that an existing venue wasn’t going to work for the residency. There are 1,000 visual-effects artists on ABBA Voyage, making it the biggest project ILM has done, according to Gisla (and this is the company behind Star Wars, Marvel, and Jurassic Park ). The roof of ABBA Arena was reengineered three times to fit the complicated lighting system. Where many concerts might use only one lighting rig, this one uses 20.

There was a lot of work put into making the ABBA-tars — which, the band stresses, are not holograms, but digital versions of the members that look like real, physical performers. Not too long before the pandemic put things to a near-halt, the four members of ABBA met from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, for four and half weeks straight, performing for 200 cameras and a crew of nearly 40 people while wearing motion-capture suits. They posted up in a sound studio within the Swedish Film Institute, playing all the songs they had carefully curated for their first show in 40 years. “It was really a pleasure for all of us,” Andersson says.

Editor’s picks

Every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term, the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history.

Back in London, body doubles emulated the performances, but with a younger energy. “We are sort of merged together with our body doubles. Don’t ask me how it works because I can’t explain that,” Andersson continues. “If you’re 75, you don’t jump around like you did when you were 34, so this is why this happened.”

“ABBA are onstage there physically, and we can say that with quite some degree of certainty because we are in rehearsals right now,” Gisla says. Andersson was impressed when he watched himself and the others “perform” for the first time in April: “I see myself standing onstage, talking to you. It’s absolutely believable. It’s not unbelievable. It’s believable!”

During rehearsals, Andersson and bandmate Björn Ulvaeus were hit with a spark of creativity. They penned two new songs — “I Still Have Faith in You” and “Don’t Shut Me Down” — and asked Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad if they’d record them for the show. “We recorded those two and found that we’re still good enough,” Andersson says. Eventually, they recorded a whole album, last year’s Voyage. “I Still Have Faith in You” was so well-regarded that it garnered the group its first Grammy nomination ever.

There’s still much about the future of the production that ABBA and ILM still don’t know. They could end up touring years from now, or even change the set list. One thing’s for sure: Gisla and Ludvig Andersson have no plans to do anything like this again, and they point out that nothing like this should probably exist again in the future. As impressive as the tech is, they worry about how it could be used. “I personally don’t think that doing things posthumously with artists that are passed away, where they have no hand or opinion or say in the matter, is a good idea,” Gisla explains. “ABBA made this show, but had they not been involved, it wouldn’t be an ABBA concert.”

Ludvig Andersson adds: “We hear often, ‘This is the dawn of a new era in live entertainment.’ I think that’s an incorrect statement. I don’t think it is. This is unique.”

ABBA Reunite to Receive One of Sweden's Highest Honors

Elvis presley hologram to perform on london stage later this year, 'snl': kate mckinnon reunites with maya rudolph, kristen wiig for christmas.

The London location was a no-brainer for the group, which is still based in Sweden. Not only is London a major destination for international travel, it’s also the place where the often-maligned group felt most at home when away from home. “The English people have always treated ABBA like we were their own, for some weird reason,” Andersson says. “They’ve taken ABBA to their hearts and they show us that.” In some ways, ABBA’s return is perfectly timed. Many millennials were exposed to the group through the tribute pop band A*Teens at the turn of the century, and later, the musical Mamma Mia! and its cult-classic film adaptation (as well as the original sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) . For both millennials and Gen Z kids, the group is a musical fixture on the level of what the Beatles were for Gen X. There are ABBA-themed parties at venues across the globe, and songs like “Dancing Queen” and “Chiquitita” have become hits on TikTok. Andersson still doesn’t understand. “That’s pretty weird, isn’t it? It’s 40 years ago, and the corpse is still moving. I don’t know. Maybe it’s good enough. Maybe that’s the only answer.”

Post Malone Reveals New Album Title With Massive Billboard

• By Tomás Mier

Sabrina Carpenter Covers Chappell Roan's 'Good Luck, Babe' After Saying She Had It on 'Loop'

• Island Gals

Blackpink's Lisa Announces Solo Single 'Rockstar'

• Live Laugh Lisa

Ivan Cornejo Announces Arena Tour to Celebrate Upcoming Album 'Mirada'

• Hitting the Road

Everything We Know About Sabrina Carpenter's New Album 'Short n' Sweet'

• New Era Loading
• By Larisha Paul

Most Popular

Pat sajak passes 'wheel of fortune' hosting baton to ryan seacrest and tells him: 'you’re never going to find a better job' or 'a better co-host' in vanna white, kenya moore suspended indefinitely from ‘real housewives of atlanta’, prince harry & meghan markle might be going back to their royal exit plan that queen elizabeth nixed, photographer wins ai image contest with real picture, then gets disqualified, you might also like, willie mays, san francisco giants legend and mlb hall of famer, dies at 93, anderson .paak talks pharrell film, as sabrina carpenter, colman domingo hit louis vuitton, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, ian mckellen hospitalized after fall from west end stage, expected to make ‘speedy and full recovery’, nets parent bse global valued at $6 billion as kochs land 15% stake.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

• Manage Account

ABBA Take Trip to the Future With Virtual Live Show: Inside the Pioneering Production

The four members of ABBA made a rare public appearance to watch their 'ABBA-tars' perform in the highly technical stage show.

By Richard Smirke

Richard Smirke

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on Pinterest
• + additional share options added
• Share on Reddit
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Whats App
• Send an Email
• Print this article
• Post a Comment
• Share on Tumblr

LONDON — After a 40-year wait, Swedish pop sensations ABBA made their eagerly-anticipated return to the live stage on Thursday. And although none of the real-life musicians were actually onstage performing, all four of them were present in London, making a rare public appearance at the premiere of their virtual live concert ABBA Voyage.

See latest videos, charts and news

Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog walked the red carpet and received a rapturous standing ovation when they appeared onstage together at the end of the much-hyped show, which features de-aged digital avatar versions of the band – or ABBA-tars, as the show’s producers insist on calling them – and takes place in a new purpose-built 3,000-capacity ABBA Arena in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London.

ABBA Partner Pophouse Enters Catalog-Buying Market With Swedish Mafia House Deal

Billed as a “Concert Like No Other,” the launch was attended by King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden, as well as several music stars and VIPs, including Kylie Minogue, Zara Larsson, Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker, Kate Moss and Keira Knightley.

Trending on Billboard

For lovers of ABBA, who broke up in 1982 and have continually resisted lucrative offers to re-form, ABBA Voyage delivers the type of jaw-dropping greatest hits live show that most fans thought they’d never get the chance to see again.

For the wider live music industry, it represents a fascinating glimpse into a potential future where the world’s biggest acts no longer have to travel or even physically appear onstage to pack concert venues and sell millions of tickets, theoretically extending an act’s touring career well into old age and, if demand allows, beyond death.

The concept is not new and versions of 3D hologram live music shows have been around for several years now: Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Whitney Houston, Tupac Shakur and Roy Orbison are among the artists that have been recreated digitally for audiences’ entertainment, with varying degrees of success and believability.

ABBA Voyage represents a seismic leap forward in terms of technology and sheer scale to sit at the cutting edge of what virtual concerts can now deliver. Breaking new ground comes at a high price, however, with the Swedish band reportedly needing to recoup around £140 million ($176 million) to cover production costs (a spokesperson for the production declined to comment on how much the show costs to stage).

Work on the production began in 2016 and went through several different guises as the thinking and technology behind it evolved. Early on, the show was envisaged as a hologram-type event, then a touring concert series, before settling on a London residency.

To create the digital versions of Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Frida, technicians from George Lucas’ special effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) spent five weeks inside a Stockholm movie studio filming the four band members – now all in their 70s – performing their back catalog, while wearing figure-hugging motion-capture suits.

There were 160 cameras scanning their bodies, recording their every movement and facial expression, which the designers then used as the basis for the avatars that drive the live show. Body doubles were also used in the motion capture process to give the digital band – represented in their late 1970s prime, complete with glitzy sequined costumes and winged catsuit outfits designed by B Åkerlund and Dolce & Gabbana — a more youthful energy.

More than 1,000 visual-effects artists and one billion computing hours went into making the ABBA-tars as eerily realistic and human-like as possible. During the show, they appear on huge 65-million-pixel screens, often as life-sized versions of their younger selves. At other times, the four musicians are shown in photo-realistic close up on the large screens that loom over the dance floor and surrounding seats.

The boundaries between physical and digital realms are further blurred by a 10-piece live band that energetically performs the group’s hits onstage, merging seamlessly with recordings of Agnetha and Frida’s voices, Bjorn’s guitar and Benny’s piano.

A spectacular light show utilizing 20 lighting rigs and over 500 moving lights add to the visual spectacle, helping create the illusion that you have travelled back in time and the four members of ABBA are there, performing on stage in front of you.

The magic is temporarily broken whenever the avatars address the audience and their pre-recorded words are drowned out by the crowd (rather than pausing and milking the applause as any seasoned real-life performer would instinctively do). But the show moves at such a fast visually stimulating pace that these awkward moments are fleeting and soon forgotten.

There are also playful nods to the digital artifice on display with the four characters routinely joking about how good they look for their age or pretending to struggle to get into their costumes. Two animations by U.K.-based visual artists Shynola effectively act as big-budget intervals between the virtual avatar performances, while the production team – led by Ludvig Andersson, son of Benny, Svana Gisla and director Baillie Walsh — wisely steer clear of making the avatars’ dancing seem too slickly choreographed and synchronized, replicating the quirky homespun charm of the original performers.

“With ABBA Voyage the band have created their own monument which is as brilliant and timeless as their music,” says Frank Briegmann , chairman & CEO Universal Music Central Europe and Deutsche Grammophon.

For now, the concert runs just over 90 minutes with 20 songs, spanning some of ABBA’s biggest hits (“Mamma Mia”, “Thank You For The Music”, “The Winner Takes It All”, “Knowing Me Knowing You”) alongside fan favorite album cuts (“The Visitors,” “Hole In Your Soul,” “When All Is Said And Done”) and two tracks from last year’s comeback album, also called Voyage (“Don’t Shut Me Down” and “I Still Have Faith In You”).

It’s a safe assumption that the set list will change over time with new songs dropped into the production at regular intervals throughout its run to encourage repeat visits. The model behind ABBA Voyage is expressly built to maximize those revenue generating opportunities, with the show booked to run in London for least the next 12 months, hosting between seven and nine gigs a week, including two weekend matinees. (In an interview with Variety earlier this week, Andersson said they had sold around 380,000 tickets so far).

Beyond that, the purpose-built venue — a futuristic-looking steel structure which loosely resembles a 70s spacecraft, houses 291 speakers and has LED lights spelling out the band’s name on its outer skin – has a four-year lease agreement with London council in place, meaning that more than four million people could pass through its doors by the time the show leaves the U.K. in late 2026 (based on full capacity shows running seven times a week).

Where ABBA Voyage goes after that is open to all possibilities with the band’s global popularity – enhanced by the two Mamma Mia feature films, spin off Mamma Mia! The Party dining experience and ongoing popularity of the group’s evergreen catalog – meaning they could theoretically pack up and transport the ABBA Arena, or even operate multiple versions of the same immersive concert experience, anywhere in the world.

“To be or not to be,” wise cracks Benny’s avatar during the show “That is no longer the question.” ABBA Voyage makes those words a reality.

Get weekly rundowns straight to your inbox

Want to know what everyone in the music business is talking about?

Get in the know on.

Billboard is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Billboard Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

optional screen reader

Charts expand charts menu.

• Billboard Hot 100™
• Billboard 200™
• Hits Of The World™
• TikTok Billboard Top 50
• Songs Of The Summer
• Song Breaker
• Year-End Charts
• Decade-End Charts

Music Expand music menu

• R&B/Hip-Hop

Videos Expand videos menu

Culture expand culture menu, media expand media menu, business expand business menu.

• Business News
• Record Labels
• View All Pro

Pro Tools Expand pro-tools menu

• Songwriters & Producers
• Artist Index
• Royalty Calculator
• Market Watch
• Industry Events Calendar

Billboard Español Expand billboard-espanol menu

• Cultura y Entretenimiento

Get Up Anthems by Tres Expand get-up-anthems-by-tres menu

Honda music expand honda-music menu.

How ABBA Voyage and other avatar or ‘hologram’ concert performances evoke fans’ real responses

Assistant Professor of Music, Ambrose University

Disclosure statement

Alyssa Michaud receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and from the Ambrose University Research Fund.

View all partners

At ABBA Voyage, a 90-minute long digital concert event, ABBA’s Benny Andersson looks over the crowd and addresses them reassuringly: “ This is really me , I just look very good for my age.”

Andersson, of course, is not physically present in the arena, but rather is a digitally animated avatar.

ABBA Voyage is a new type of concert experience, where avatars of the pop stars are accompanied by live musicians . This performance is hosted in a 3,000-seat custom-built concert venue in London.

Unlike earlier digital avatar performances (sometimes referred to as “hologram” concerts ), ABBA Voyage plays out on 65-million-pixel LED screens . In previous shows featuring the likes of Roy Orbison and Whitney Houston, performers’ avatars were projected onto a band of translucent plastic. In both formats, an animated two-dimensional image on a screen gives the appearance of a lifelike, 3D performer.

Recent research on K-pop performances with digital avatars has shown that these digital performers can in fact create a sense of co-presence and immediacy with a live audience, and ABBA Voyage concerts do the same.

Voyage blurs the boundaries of what audiences understand as a live performance, contributing to a century-long conversation about the complex relationship between technology and performance in the arts. It raises questions about whether digital avatar concerts can meet audiences’ expectations in a live concert experience.

Read more: K-pop fans protest against treatment of Monsta X lead singer

Skeptical about aims

Many fans and critics were skeptical about ABBA’s virtual return, which was preceded by a new record release, also titled Voyage .

Reviews of the digital concert experience frequently use language that paint the experience as hyper-real and somewhat uncanny . Reviewer Niall Byrne of the Irish music site Nialler described the show as featuring ABBA “ cryogenically frozen as their younger selves .”

But 1.3 million ticket sales later, the show’s success speaks for itself.

However, the fixation on whether or not ABBA Voyage is a “real” concert takes attention away from a far more interesting conversation: how an avatar performance evokes very real responses from an audience sharing a physical space and an emotional experience.

Fans prepare and invest

In 2022, my research assistants and I conducted interviews with audience members ranging in age from their early 20s to their late 50s who had travelled to ABBA Voyage from five different countries in North America and Europe. One of the themes concertgoers were most eager to describe was their preparation for the concert.

Attendees discussed in detail the plans they had drawn up for their trip — sometimes nearly a year in advance. They described the long wait and anticipation they felt, the outfits they had prepared and the way they had re-listened to ABBA’s music — all in an effort to feel ready to participate in an event that they hoped would be meaningful and memorable.

Fears about technology, emotional payoff

Our interview subjects commonly experienced apprehension at the beginning of the show, owing to the amount of preparation they had invested as concertgoers.

For some, it was anxiety about the extensive use of technology and the ways it might hinder the experience. For others, it was simply a nervous hope that the show would live up to their expectations.

One interviewee from Bristol, England, found that they were unable to relax into enjoying the show until they had overcome these anxieties:

“You kind of invest so much into it and you so much want it to be brilliant and you’re kind of a bit worried that you might feel let down. So it wasn’t until the first 10 minutes was over that I found that like: ‘Oh, I can relax now. It is really brilliant so I can enjoy it!’”

Despite fears about technology and the show’s emotional payoff, every interviewee who expressed these reservations later affirmed that their expectations were exceeded by the concert.

Creating lasting memories

Audience members reported that they left the venue with a sense of connection to those with whom they shared the experience — a finding that echoes recent research into fan experiences at other digital concert events.

Some participants noted that they felt unexpectedly emotional participating in this group dynamic, including a middle-aged man:

“It’s kind of like shock and awe isn’t it? …. I felt quite emotional at times through the concert, and you’re thinking: ‘Well, why are you emotional? It’s technology that’s like, reproducing this for you….’ I know there were people around me that were feeling the same way as well, and how often does that happen, you know?”

Voyage works on an emotional level because it encourages audience preparation and anticipation, and then delivers a collective experience of live connection, surprise and wonder.

Human connection

Audiences bring a performance — holographic or otherwise — to life with their attention and investment , and ABBA Voyage serves as a clear demonstration of this effect.

These interviews demonstrated the ways that the audience’s preparation positions them to have a meaningful experience, and how the carefully designed elements of the show ease anxieties about potential disappointment or alienation during the pre-programmed concert.

The audience at Voyage can experience a sense of community and feelings of personal meaning, regardless of whether the performers are bodily present. As music researcher Christopher Small has argued, experiences of identity and meaning in a musical experience are co-created by all of its participants, including the audience.

The new performance practices at ABBA Voyage — and audience members’ responses to them — offer important insights into the inner workings of live audience engagement, particularly as we move further into an age in which human and technological elements are becoming increasingly intertwined.

Research assistants John Glanville and Anna Konrad co-authored this story.

• Live performance
• Listen to this article

Social Media Producer

Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Generative AI

Dean (Head of School), Indigenous Knowledges

Senior Research Fellow - Curtin Institute for Energy Transition (CIET)

Laboratory Head - RNA Biology

Mick Jagger talks ABBA Voyage show and AI technology: “you can do a lot of musical stuff with not very complicated computerisation”

Could The Rolling Stones be providing virtual satisfaction for decades to come?

The Rolling Stones might still be rocking, but lead singer Mick Jagger hasn’t ruled out the possibility of his band becoming a virtual entity in the vein of ABBA at some point in the future.

Asked by Matt Wilkinson on Apple Music Hits whether the Stones could one day enter the digital dimension, Jagger said: “That would be stupid to me to give you a one-line answer, because I haven’t really honestly thought about it.”

He went on to refer to the Swedish pop titans’ not-quite London residency as a “technology breakthrough,” though he’s yet to witness it for himself.

“I was supposed to go and see it, but there was a train strike,” Jagger explains. “So I didn’t get to go. I wasn’t going on the train, but … the traffic was horrible.”

Congestion woes aside, Sir Mick certainly seems interested in how tech could help to keep the Stones alive.

“Obviously technology is going to give you some of the answers to this, and who knows what technology lies in store down the road?” he says. “We’re already in an AI world of doing this stuff, and you can do a lot of musical stuff with not very complicated computerisation, as well.”

ABBA’s Voyage show has earned rave reviews since it opened earlier this year, with the band’s ‘Abbatars’ being created using a combination of 3D animation and giant walls of LED screens .

Get the MusicRadar Newsletter

Want all the hottest music and gear news, reviews, deals, features and more, direct to your inbox? Sign up here.

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it. 

“The Nanobox range gets a sampler and a powerful one at that”: 1010music Nanobox Tangerine review

“Our version boasts 16 voices and many new features that push the boundaries of what's possible in a synthesizer”: Behringer says that the engineering work involved in creating the Pro-16, which is inspired by the Prophet-5, is “extraordinarily complex”

Whistle down the wind: The Aussie attempting to save whistling from the cultural dustbin

Most Popular

Culture | Music

ABBA Voyage review: Can this be real? I literally could not believe my eyes

If only it were acceptable to begin reviews with the brain exploding emoji. Four virtual ABBA members, or ABBAtars, performed the premiere of their Voyage concert experience in a specially built arena in east London, and looked so convincing that I was left with no idea what was real and what was not. This bears overstating: I literally could not believe my eyes.

Was that really the King and Queen of Sweden sitting behind me? Could that truly be Keira Knightley, Jarvis Cocker and Sadiq Khan elsewhere in the audience? How can I not have bumped my head and woken up in 1979, when every hair on Seventies Benny Andersson ’s arm is clearly visible, every flap of Seventies Agnetha Fältskog ’s sparkling flares?

I saw the hologram Whitney Houston show two years ago and it was a bit naff, with the late soul singer obviously a 2D projection on a piece of glass. This production from Industrial Light & Magic, which filmed the quartet using motion capture technology over five weeks in 2020, was galaxies ahead of anything similar.

Andersson, Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad danced across the wide stage, mingled, hugged, and teased each other about their 1974 Eurovision outfits. When they appeared in huge proportions on the big screens they had the mildest plasticine quality, but otherwise they were astonishingly real, to the extent that they even came on late and left the stage for their costume changes.

The ecstatic crowd reaction showed that people were fully immersed. It’s doubtful that many here saw ABBA when they last played in London – seven nights at Wembley Arena in 1979 – and it’s hard to believe that can have been any more joyful than this, with its light effects whizzing to the back of the 3,000-capacity room, space backdrop and a live 10-piece band that was having even more fun than the VR stars.

They did most of the hits, of course, and the best two from last year’s surprise comeback album. A few songs, including Knowing Me, Knowing You and Lay All Your Love on Me, were presented more like big screen pop videos. It was when the group were life-size that they convinced completely.

The biggest surprise came when they appeared in current 70-something form for a bow at the end. They left – holograms again! – and the quartet took to the stage for real, earning a hugely deserved ovation for an extraordinary production that really does look like the future of live music. The Rolling Stones, Elton John and anyone else who’s now less hip, more hip replacement should be queueing up for the avatar treatment. There’ll be no need to tell our grandchildren about the great bands of our youth. They could all still be on stage, forever young thanks to miraculous work like this.

ABBA Arena, to May 28, 202; ticketmaster.co.uk/abba-voyage

Trailer drops for BTS member J-Hope's new docuseries

Which UK festivals have been cancelled so far?

Justin Timberlake - Everything I Thought It Was: embarrassingly horny

Make your next trip to the West End a celebration of women in culture

Create a FREE account to continue reading

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

ABBA Voyage

How to get there.

1 Pudding Mill Lane, London, E15 2RU

Select date and session

No booking fees

Tickets Selling Fast

Similar Experiences

Live music: jonjan, music from the movies by candlelight, virtuoso piano by candlelight - feat. flight of the bumblebee, candlelight: hans zimmer's best works, candlelight: hans zimmer's best works on piano, classical and jazz piano by candlelight, silent disco & retro gaming party, bingo jamz london summer fest, wejam - the immersive rockstar experience, wonderland: adult soft play.

Sorry, JavaScript must be enabled to use this web app

• ABBA - Voyage Tickets Mon, Dec 30, 2024 3:00 pm at ABBA Arena in London, GB

Buy ABBA - Voyage tickets to see the best pop and rock music acts live and in-person on Mon, Dec 30, 2024 3:00 pm at ABBA Arena in London, GB.

• Canary Wharf ›

An unexpected error occurred. Please try again. If the problem persists contact Customer Support.

Stay updated on ABBA - Voyage Tickets Mon, Dec 30, 2024 3:00 pm at ABBA Arena in London, GB and find even more events in london .

Ticket Types

• Availability Calendar
• Getting Here
• Food & Drink
• Oceanbird Lounge
• Where to Stay
• Accessibility
• Members Hub

Limited availability

Tickets selling fast. Check for returns.

Best availability on the Dance Floor

August 2024

September 2024.

Good availability across most performances

October 2024

November 2024, december 2024.

The perfect Christmas party

View all Months

Ticket Information

Now booking until 11 May 2025, the ABBA Arena has plenty of ticket choices: have the time of your life on the dance floor, party in style in your own dance booth, or take in the atmosphere from our auditorium seating.

Dance Floor

These tickets are for standing or dancing. The area is general admission and is a great place to meet your group of friends as you are free to dance anywhere within the area.

Auditorium Seating

Choose from a wide variety of seats at a range of different prices. Pricing is based on the location of the seats, but in our purpose-built arena every seat is a good one. Please be aware that people around you may stand up and dance, we encourage those who want to dance to book the dancefloor.

Dance Booths

We have eight Dance Booths in total, with capacity for either 10 or 12 people. These are flexible spaces, so you can book an individual ticket, or a whole booth for your party. Each booth has seating, plus your very own dance floor and dedicated booth bar.

Accessible Seats

The ABBA Arena has plenty of wheelchair spaces, ambulant seats and seats suitable for a wheelchair user to transfer into. All of these seats and spaces must be booked in advance and are clearly marked on our seating plan.

Groups Booking

If you would like to book for 15 people or more, email: [email protected] .

Looking for short term availability?

Last remaining tickets for Sunday

Ticket and Hotel Packages

Package tickets with the best choice of hotel via our recommended package provider, Holiday Extras

Frequently Asked Questions

How much are tickets, and how many people can i come with.

• Concert ticket prices start from £21.50 (plus a £2.95 Ticketmaster handling fee per transaction) and there are plenty of ticket types to choose from. Take a look at our   tickets page for more information or check out   Ticketmaster   for more information on prices.
• You’ll be able to book up to 14 tickets at a time for the main auditorium and Dance Floor and up to 44 tickets in the Dance Booths.

Where can I find my tickets?

For ABBA Voyage, we’re offering an e-ticketing system. This means you’ll only be able to access your tickets through your Ticketmaster account, or the app, using a smartphone – they won’t be emailed to you or available for print.

If you can’t see them straightaway, don’t worry this is just one of the security features. They should appear in your account around 5 days before the concert.

For more questions about your tickets, please get in touch with Ticketmaster.

Can I have an exchange or refund? 

Unfortunately, Ticketmaster don’t offer exchanges or refunds, but they can help you sell your ticket to another fan. Please get in touch with them  here .

Can I only buy tickets from official ticketing partners? 

The simple answer is yes. We reserve the right to refuse entry to guests with tickets purchased from re-sale websites. Tickets purchased via our official partners must not be sold or advertised for sale anywhere else. Any ticket advertised for sale in this way will be automatically void.

Can I pay for my tickets in instalments?

Yes – for this concert you can pay in instalments using Klarna or PayPal.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

ABBA get a prestigious Swedish knighthood for their pop career that started at Eurovision

The music group ABBA with Björn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog and Benny Andersson will receive the Royal Vasa Order from Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia at a ceremony at Stockholm Royal Palace on May 31 for outstanding contributions to Swedish and international music life. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via AP)

• Copy Link copied

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The four members of the Swedish pop quartet ABBA, who triumphed at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with the peppy love song “Waterloo,” on Friday got one of the most prestigious knighthoods in Sweden from the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf .

The Order of the Vasa was handed out for the first time in almost 50 years. Agnetha Faltskog , Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad became “Commander of the First Class” of the order for “very outstanding efforts in Swedish and international music life.”

Sweden has several orders, including the Royal Order of Seraphim, which is awarded to heads of state and foreign royals, and the Royal Order of the Polar Star that is given to foreign citizens and stateless persons.

The Royal Order of Vasa, which is given in recognition of personal efforts for Sweden or for Swedish interests as well as the successful performance of public duties and assignments, was dormant until late 2022, when it was reactivated after regulations opened the Royal Orders to Swedish citizens again.

Earlier this year, candidates were nominated by the public and the Swedish government and the king approved the nominees that included the four ABBA members.

The orders were awarded during a solemn ceremony at the Royal Palace in the gilded Vita Havet Assembly Rooms. The monarch handed them the order in a red box while a diploma was given to them by Queen Silvia.

”The order you get today today is Sweden’s thanks for your exceptional efforts,” the monarch said before handing out orders to “13 exceptional Swedes.”

Andersson, Faltskog , Lyngstad, who now uses the last name Reuss walked up using a cane, and Ulvaeus received the order in an event that was aired live on Swedish media.

The Eurovision victory turned ABBA into a pop juggernaut, by far the most successful band to win the pan-continental music contest. ABBA’s melodic disco pop sold hundreds of millions of records worldwide. The stage musical “Mamma Mia!” based on its songs is 25 years old and spawned two movies.

Coincidentally, the 2024 Eurovision was held in southern Sweden. Swiss singer Nemo won the 68th contest with “The Code,” an operatic pop-rap ode to the singer’s journey toward embracing a nongender identity.

The Swedish band members have not performed together live for four decades, but released a comeback album, “Voyage,” in 2021. The digital “ABBA-tars” opened in London in 2022.

Two other receipients were two 2023 Nobel Prize winners: French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier , and Svante Pääbo , who won the coveted award in physics and medicine. They were both made Commander Grand Cross of the Royal Order of the Polar Star for “outstanding research efforts.”

• Statistics Stats
• You are here:

ABBA Voyage

• June 15, 2024 Setlist

ABBA Voyage Setlist at ABBA Arena, London, England

• Edit setlist songs
• Edit venue & date

Edit set times

• Add to festival
• Report setlist

Note: Early show

Edits and Comments

2 activities (last edit by RockerFanV , 17 Jun 2024, 19:58 Etc/UTC )

More from this Artist

• More Setlists
• Artist Statistics
• Add setlist
• ABBA Voyage This Setlist Add time Add time
• ABBA Voyage Add time Add time

ABBA Voyage Gig Timeline

• Jun 13 2024 ABBA Arena London, England Add time Add time
• Jun 14 2024 ABBA Arena London, England Add time Add time
• Jun 15 2024 ABBA Arena This Setlist London, England Add time Add time
• Jun 15 2024 ABBA Arena London, England Add time Add time
• Jun 16 2024 ABBA Arena London, England Add time Add time

Concert People

Share or embed this setlist.

Use this setlist for your event review and get all updates automatically!

<div style="text-align: center;" class="setlistImage"><a href="https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/abba-voyage/2024/abba-arena-london-england-7b5786cc.html" title="ABBA Voyage Setlist ABBA Arena, London, England 2024" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.setlist.fm/widgets/setlist-image-v1?id=7b5786cc" alt="ABBA Voyage Setlist ABBA Arena, London, England 2024" style="border: 0;" /></a> <div><a href="https://www.setlist.fm/edit?setlist=7b5786cc&amp;step=song">Edit this setlist</a> | <a href="https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/abba-voyage-3ff2517.html">More ABBA Voyage setlists</a></div></div>

Last.fm Event Review

[url=https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/abba-voyage/2024/abba-arena-london-england-7b5786cc.html][img]https://www.setlist.fm/widgets/setlist-image-v1?id=7b5786cc[/img][/url] [url=https://www.setlist.fm/edit?setlist=7b5786cc&amp;step=song]Edit this setlist[/url] | [url=https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/abba-voyage-3ff2517.html]More ABBA Voyage setlists[/url]

Tour Update

Marquee memories: friedberg.

• Jun 17, 2024
• Jun 16, 2024
• Jun 15, 2024
• Jun 14, 2024
• Jun 13, 2024
• Jun 12, 2024
• FAQ | Help | About
• Terms of Service
• Ad Choices | Privacy Policy
• Feature requests
• Songtexte.com