To ABBA Or Not To ABBA
There are still a lot of tickets available for ABBA’s virtual return to live performances after a 40 year absence London, England in 2022, and I am considering going. Part of me thinks that the reunited ABBA’s concert is too much a gussied streamed show with all the important stuff (aka the singing) pre-recorded and who wants to go to London for that? The rest of me thinks that maybe the technology is so great right now well then, why not?
ABBA were the greatest pop band of the 1970s and, according to Barry Walters in NPR (here) you can trace their influence through to Robyn, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Ke$ha, Usher, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Icona Pop… or to put it another way, Max Martin and Shellac (both Swedish, as is ABBA of course) are ABBA’s progeny -tuneful melodies with great harmonies and state of the art production: so when you say they were unfashionable, ypu mean they were unfashionable in their heyday, in the 1970s, but since then they’ve remained a huge influenced, helped by the theatrical musical and movie “Mama Mia”.
While the two new songs are nothing much, the performance might be a great experience, but it is very expensive a halfway decent seat is around $350 and if you add onto that flying over from New York, hotel, etc, it could set you back $1,500 per. For what amounts to a pretaped ABBA (they will be in the audience opening night), a little pricey. What could have made me definitely go?
1 – I don’t care what age they are, I’d pay to see them in person
2 – If they could bring the VR like Travis Scott on Fortnite…
It truly feels as though ABBA have made a miscalculation, I realize they are old, and I realize they don’t need the money, but I am old as well and I want to see the actual band and not avatars. Björn Ulvaeus is 76 years of age and the oldest member, if Bob Dylan can tour at 80, why can’t ABBA? They could do it Rolling Stones style, 15 nights over a month. That could net them $100M alone.
But that isn’t what we have so here we are…. Can they tour with it? Maybe, in huge cities, in New York, Tokyo, like that, because they can’t just move it, they have to construct a stadium for the Special Effects, but if they can, there is nothing to stop em from recouping their money as a sort of Broadway not Broadway show.
