The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Kanye West and Beyoncé are quite worldfamous, but none of them have what ABBA has: Voyage , a show in whichavatars perform daily in their own venue in London. Forty years after thesplit in 1982, the cash register continues to ring, while the band members ofABBA sit quietly at home in Sweden and don’t have to shed a drop of sweat. Thespectacle has been running non-stop since May 27, an unprecedented multimediamotion capture phenomenon that tops the list of the most expensive live musicof all time in terms of production costs. The proof is in the Christmaspudding: Humo went to determine with my own ears and eyes whether it isworth a detour.
Serge SimonartDecember 22, 20223:00 PM
When booking you have to choose: a ticket for the dance floor or a seat or, ifyou are part of a company outing, a kind of sky box with a private dancefloor. I chose the dance floor – you’re either a dancing queen or you’re not.Incidentally, an estimated 30 percent of the audience consists of a differentkind of queens. I’m instantly adopted by a group of gay Australians who’vestayed in London after the Pride march, showing up here in T-shirts withambiguous inscriptions like ‘Voulez-vous’, ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man AfterMidnight)’ and ‘Take a Chance on Me’. They know, as it turns out, all ABBAlyrics by heart. One of them is a brain surgeon, or so he claims, and saysthere’s ‘no better way to combat stress than singing loudly with Abba’. “Ourblood group is not A or B, but ABBA.”
Incidentally, no opportunity to be kitschy has been missed – neon lights instark colours, tacky souvenirs (an ABBA debar door, anyone or ABBA socks?) –but the room, made of black steel, looks stylish.
For years, ABBA was synonymous with a lack of cool, the group was seen as aseparator from sugary mainstream pop. But the tide has turned: the Sex Pistolsconfessed at an unguarded moment that their ‘Pretty Vacant’ is based on ‘SOS’,and U2 and Nirvana also came out as big fans. And when cover band Björn Again,as one of the first tribute bands worldwide, attracted full houses, thebusinessman in Björn Ulvaeus woke up.
Stockholm has at least four beautiful museums, now they attract fewer peoplethan the ABBA museum there. Then came the ABBA musical and the ‘Mamma Mia’films, which together accounted for more than 5 billion (!) dollars inrevenue. And then Simon Fuller (van Pop Idol and the Spice Girls) abrilliant idea: ABBA live, without ABBA. It became a technological feat of thestudio, which at the time was the visual language of the equally revolutionary_Star Wars_ – and developed Marvel movies.
300 Euro
The public is warned in advance: photography is absolutely forbidden, becauseif images leaked on social media, it would ruin the mystique of the show. Oh,irony: artists of flesh and blood are allowed, holograms are not. That’s likesomeone forbidding you to take a picture of a TV screen.
Meanwhile, a Swedish snow-covered forest is shown on a gigantic, hall-widescreen, and if you look closely, you will occasionally see a nymph or a fairyslip by. Screams echo from three thousand throats around me, even though theshow is only fifty minutes away. When the time comes, Benny Andersson’s ABBAtar says: ‘ To be or not to be is no longer the question!’ As a word ofwelcome from the mouth of a hologram, that is a statement that can count.Freely translated: we are here, but we are not there either. This spectacle isa game changer, so leave all expectations and prejudices in the cloakroom. Anavatar is already bizarre, an avatar that ventures into metaphysical bindingtexts is doubly bizarre.
First observation: the sound is perfect. That is by no means self-evident at aconcert. And this room is so perfect acoustically that you don’t hear any echoor metallic overtones. During some songs you only see the four on stage,during others a full backing band emerges, of which even I can only say withcertainty after a few minutes that those musicians are also holograms. Ofcourse the avatars are fake: it’s not live, but a kind of playback squared.When artists introduced the sound mix thirty years ago – singing live withaccompaniment on tape – it was considered a scam. Now everyone here pays up to300 euros for a relatively short appearance of holograms. But at festivals andstadium concerts, half of the audience is forced to watch screens more oftenthan the tiny performers.
The ABBA tars look staggeringly real, much more real than a wax figure inMadame Tussauds – they look as if holograms, 3D and CGI have combined to makechildren. The technique behind the show is truly phenomenal. The only momentswhen you notice it’s not real is when the cheers or applause are a littleshorter than the makers had thought, so that the ABBA tar is swaying aimlesslybefore he or she speaks. Only, the avatars are like precision bombing. Thefirst seconds you think: wow, this is unbelievable, is the technology reallythat advanced? But humans are blasé and we are programmed to take for grantedeverything that seemed unimaginable soon after. Even a hologram gets boringquickly.
ABBA VoyageSculpture Johan Persson
SIZE SLIMKER
There are jokes (‘On the way to the Eurovision Song Contest Björn had to standon the bus, because his pants were so tight that they would rip if he satdown’). There are impressive moments, but there is also farm trickery. This ishow a cartoon is projected – made especially for this event, okay, but still:just a cartoon. The clip of ‘Waterloo’ is also shown, with which ABBA won the1974 Eurovision Song Contest. Nice, but everyone has already seen it onYouTube. And this is a pilgrimage after all, because the hall is located atthe Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a long way outside the center of London.
The holograms of Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid are (age) timeless: youngand streamlined (the ladies’ derrières are a size slimmer than in reality) andfree of wrinkles and sweat (that would probably cause a short circuit). Thereal ABBA has played only a hundred performances at the time, one of which wasin the Arenahal in, of all places Doorne.
The ABBA tars play two gigs a day without complaint, are not members of aunion and never complain. This is the hardest working band in show business– James Brown is turning in his grave. Other advantages of ABBA tars: theystill hit all the high notes and they don’t have to interrupt the concert dueto prostate problems. At the end of the show, the old, ‘real’ group membersbriefly appear on stage, but they too are holograms.
BOUNCER
The setlist is simple: they play all the hits, from ‘Mamma Mia’, ‘SOS’ and’Does Your Mother Know’ to ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’, the soggy sing-along’Fernando’ and the miserable ‘Chiquitita’ to the irresistible bouncer ‘Dancing Queen’. Every one of those songs, even the gooey ones, is amasterclass in writing hits. And each of those hits contains one word orphrase of which a level-headed intellectual says, “It doesn’t add anything, ithits like pliers on a pig.” But what would “Mamma Mia” be without “Mamma mia,”or “Knowing Me, Knowing You” without “Aha”?
This one Voyage is in any case a milestone and a turning point in thehistory of pop music. The show can be booked until mid-2027. Will it continueto sell out, year in, year out? Maybe not as a concert, but certainly as anight out, such as renting a bowling alley for a birthday or bachelor party.In any case, anyone who needs this will love it.
Voyage felt like virtual sex to the ears. I got a brilliant idea during this’concert’: from now on I’ll have my avatar write this kind of nonsense, whileI’m sipping an Old Fashioned by the pool of my penthouse in Monte Carlo andlooking down at the head of my zealous Swedish mistress .
‘ ABBA Voyage’, until spring 2027 at the ABBA Arena in London. Info andtickets: abbavoyage.com.