ABBA reunites — with avatars — for TV tribute !
It’s the closest thing yet to an ABBA reunion: computerised avatars
of Sweden’s legendary disco group will perform during a televised
tribute to the quartet to be broadcast this autumn, ABBA member Bjorn
Ulvaeus said Thursday.
Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny
Andersson split up in 1982 after dominating the disco scene for more
than a decade with hits like “Waterloo”, “Dancing Queen”, “Mamma Mia”
and “Super Trouper”.
The group, which has sold more than 400 million albums, has not sung together on stage since 1986.
The avatars will perform an as yet unnamed ABBA song during the
tribute show, produced by British broadcaster BBC and US network NBC.
Other top musical artists are also expected to perform.
“It’s a kind of ABBA tribute show, but the centrepiece … will be
something I call ‘Abbatars’. It is digital versions of ABBA, from 1979,”
Ulvaeus told AFP.
“It’s the first time it’s ever been done.”
In order to create the avatars, “techno artists” from Silicon Valley
measured the heads of the four ABBA members and photographed them from
all angles.
“With videos and lipsynching, they’ll create digital copies of us
from 1979,” he said, referring to the year the album “Voulez-vous” was
released.
Ulvaeus was in Brussels on Thursday to try to persuade European
Broadcasting Union (EBU) member networks to sign on to the show.
The EBU is the broadcaster of the Eurovision Song Contest, the
competition that launched ABBA on the international scene when it won in
1974 with the hit “Waterloo”.
“I hope that some of them (European broadcasters) will join us and
make this … a global programme at the end of this autumn,” Ulvaeus said.
The show is expected to go on tour the following year.
https://www.journalducameroun.com/en/abba-reunites-with-avatars-for-tv-tribute/
Bjorn was a keynote speaker at the EBU Media Summit in Brussels - and he talked about the ABBAtars and the upcoming ABBA Tribute Show.
This is a section of his speech below.
You can watch the video of his entire speech here:
Bjorn Speech Video
"I have stood on many a taped white cross on studio floors in TV
studios all around Europe, miming to the latest ABBA single. Those were
the days. You only had to appear once in the biggest local show and the
next day everybody would have heard your song. My colleagues today have
to work much harder.
Well, it seems I will visit your TV channels again. In digital form
this time. We have a new project together. Well, at least some of you
are already involved. I’m talking about a big ABBA tribute show this
autumn with artists from all parts of the world.
Frida, Agnetha, Benny and I had visitors from Silicon Valley last
June. Techno artists, they call themselves. They photographed us from
all possible angles, they made us grimace in front of cameras, they
painted dots on our faces, they measured our heads. Apparently, a
cranium doesn’t change with age the way the rest of your body falls
apart. The measurements together with old videos and photos makes it
possible for these IT wizards to create perfect copies of ABBA 1979. We
thought we looked good that year.
It’s still work in progress, but they’ve come a long way and what
I’ve seen so far is simply mind-boggling. These ABBAtars will sing one
of Benny’s and my songs. You’ll hear the voices of ABBA coming out of
the mouths of the ABBAtars. Lip synch. And you won’t be able to see that
they’re not human beings. It’ll be spooky, I assure you. But great fun
and no one has done it before. There is an existential dimension to
explore as well. What would it be like to be young again. The wisdom
that we hopefully possess now in combination with the youth of the
ABBAtars.
NBC in America in partnership with the BBC have both global reach and
experience of managing projects on a huge scale and they’re
distributing the show. The plan is to make it a global television moment
and they are now reaching out to top national and regional broadcasters
like yourselves, who can be part of making it a shared experience all
around the world - with simulcast transmission wherever possible. I
can’t help thinking – it would be a bit like the Eurovision Song
Contest. It sounds incredible, but they say it’s absolutely doable.
And what will the ABBAtars sing? I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to
say, but let me give you something to talk about, a clue. The title
could have been the heading for this speech. You’ll understand when you
hear it."
Full speech text can be found here:
https://www.ebu.ch/publications/bjorn-ulvaeus-keynote-to-media-summit-2018
