ABBA - Voyage (The Story Behind The Album) 5

Filmed: January 2021 (a guess)

Location: RMV Studios, Stockholm, Sweden

Shown in: Worldwide - Internet

Additional information

When we learned about ABBA Voyage the show AND ABBA Voyage the forthcoming album in September 2021, there were two films shown which featured interviews with Björn in a hotel room, Benny in his summer house, technical footage of ABBA Voyage the show and various shots of ABBA recording in the studio.  One of the films was longer than the other and included more technical footage of ABBA Voyage the show and short comments from Svana Gisla and Ludvig Andersson.  

The film that was included in the ABBA Voyage - LIVE  broadcast on YouTube with Zoe Ball also included some different footage of ABBA in the studio.

Being the sad ABBA geek that I am, I have now studied all this footage and, based on the clothes they were wearing, can conclude that the ABBA-recording-in-the-studio footage was filmed over nine separate days. This is, of course, assuming that they changed their clothes for each day!  So each different day is now listed separately.

For this entry - and I have no idea in which order these should appear (or even if they were filmed in 2021 but I have to start somewhere) - Frida was wearing a cream jumper with a longer neck-scarf and Agnetha was wearing a brown top with spotty-designed trousers/leggings.

Both videos are included here.  On the second one the extra footage starts at 21:44.

VIDEO 1

Benny: ABBA's still around! Especially now, while we've done the new album. We knew that if there is a show we would need a couple of new songs to go with it.

Björn: So now we have ten songs - a whole album called Voyage - because it's been a voyage into uncharted territory.

Benny: When we got into the studio after 39 years, it was like no time had passed. We had a great time.

Björn: There must be something with the combination of Frida and Agnetha that makes that unique sound. They started singing - and it was ABBA. To write new lyrics after 40 years, I-I wanted to put something in there which in a way is a reflection of life during 40 years. We've acquired some knowledge and hopefully some wisdom as well. That's what I tried to write about.

Benny: The opportunity to write new music for ABBA and to record it and then coming out of the studio and sort of, "Yeah, I like the result."  And I speak to Frida and Agnetha and I know they're extremely happy having done this.

Björn: This is what we really like to do and to be able to do it at 70 is deep satisfaction as well. Yes, we can do it. The spirit is there. It's still us.

 

VIDEO 2

Benny: It's a new tour, haven't been out there for 40 years!

Björn: A new album after 40 years, it is absolutely incredible!

Benny: First there were just two songs and then we said, "Well, maybe we should do, hang on, a few others - what do you say, girls?!"  And they said, "Yeah!". Then I asked them, "Well, why don't we just do a whole album?"

Björn: The first song, I Still Have Faith In You, I knew when, when Benny played the melody, I just knew it had to be about us. It's about realising that it's inconceivable to be where we are, no imagination could dream up that - to release a new album after 40 years and still be the best of friends and still be enjoying each other's company and have total loyalty. Who has experienced that?  Nobody!

Ben Mitchell (ILM Creative Director): People have often talked about whether you can create either people who have lived in the past or people when they were younger and we actually create ABBA in their prime - 1979. We are creating them as digital characters that we will then be using performance-capture techniques to animate them and perform them and make them look perfectly real and that started first of all, with the present-day ABBAs. We did some performance-capture on them and that's formed the basis for the whole of the project - the backbone.

Ludvig Andersson (Producer): Agnetha, Frida, Benny and Björn got on a stage in front of 160 cameras and almost as many VFX geniuses and they performed every song in this show to perfection over five weeks capturing every mannerism, every motion, the soul of their beings, so that becomes the great magic of this endeavour. That when you see this show, it is not a version of, or a copy of, or people pretending to be ABBA, it is actually them.

Benny: What you're going to see when you come to this show is us!

Ben Mitchell: We're going to have four of ILM's global studios working on the project, so the team size .. it'll certainly be somewhere between 500 and 1,000 artists around the world.

Benny: We were in London three years ago. I said to Björn, "Do you think it's very clever if we try to tour this thing? Because it's technically immensely complicated. It's the screens, the sound, all the lights.  I said why don't we do it here? "Well there's no arena," he said! And I said, "Well, we can build one." London is the town.

Svana Gisla (Producer): The challenge has always been merging the digital with the physical. Make digital ABBA come into the physical world and for the boundaries between those two worlds to disappear. Our director, Baillie Walsh, had to crack that code and, as simple as it sounds, but he did it with light. Light is the connector. Light and audio and this environment is gonna be a unique space to be in which is neither digital nor physical.

Got any information to add?
Spotted a mistake?
Contact me at abbaontv@yahoo.co.uk