»Voyage«: Abba release their first album in almost 40 years

Enlarge image

Pop group Abba (undated photo)

Photo: Industrial Light & Magic / dpa

The fans had to be patient for almost four decades, but now the time has come.

The Swedish band Abba released their first studio album since the early 1980s.

Since midnight on Friday night, the new album »Voyage« has been available online as well as on CD, vinyl and cassette.

It features the previously published songs "I Still Have Faith In You", "Don't Shut Me Down" and "Just A Notion" as well as seven other songs by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid "Frida" Hear Lyngstad.

For the quartet it is the ninth studio album and the first since "The Visitors", which was released on November 30, 1981.

After a last TV appearance at the end of 1982, the band quasi broke up - after eight studio albums and they contained world hits such as "Waterloo", "Mamma Mia", "SOS" and "Dancing Queen".

Since then there have been numerous Abba compilations, but not a whole album with fresh studio recordings.

From the nineties, an increasing new cult developed around the band: in 1999 the musical "Mamma Mia!" Came on stage, followed by a film in 2008.

This September the announcement of the new album followed.

There won't be any more albums

In October 2021 Benny Andersson had spoken in the British Guardian about the future of the band.

The album will be her last, no further new music is planned.

"But now I can tell you: That's it," said the musician.

The band wrote two songs that didn't make it onto the new album and are unfinished.

But it will stay that way.

The next big Abba project is due in 2022: At the multimedia show "Abba Voyage", virtual images of the band members - so-called Abbatars - are to be shown together with a live band in a specially created arena in London from the end of May Stand on stage.

"(...) We could go on tour, but we don't have to be there ourselves," said Andersson in the Guardian about the multimedia plans.

jok / dpa