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Music group ABBA isn’t weirded out by their de-aged “Abbatars” that appear during their immersive Voyage performances. They like that their artificial intelligence depicts their younger selves.

ABBA at the launch of their 'Voyage' performances in London, 2022.
ABBA | Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images

ABBA announced a digital entertainment project, ‘Voyage,’ in 2016

According to the BBC, all four original members of ABBA, Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, reunited as early as 2016 to start work on a multimedia project.

The Eurovision winners planned a “new entertainment experience” that would be immersive and involve virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The group would appear on stage as Abbatars or A.I. versions of their younger selves.

They hoped the experience would bring their music to a new generation of fans “in a way previously unimagined,” a press release said. Then, in 2018, they announced they added new songs to the project (per the Guardian). These were the first songs ABBA recorded since splitting up.

However, the project had many starts and stops. Then, the pandemic delayed the immersive experience, which became known as Voyage and its album of the same name. In May 2022, ABBA’s first Voyage performance happened at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.

ABBA doesn’t find it weird that their Abbatars in their ‘Voyage’ performances are de-aged

According to the Guardian, ABBA didn’t mind spending five weeks creating their Abbatars at Ealing Studios in London.

The four performers were on stage, singing about 24 songs like they would have done if they were live in concert. However, they performed their show for about 75 guys with computers and many cameras.

“It sounds an odd experience for a band in their 70s, who last performed a gig in 1980, but they insist not,” the Guardian wrote. “We worked from noon to five, perhaps,” Ulvaeus says. “We would drop in and it was like going to work after a while, you know?”

ABBA isn’t weirded out by the de-aged Abbatars for their Voyage performances. “You have to realise,” Ulvaeus said, “that we are confronted by our younger selves all the time on television, in pictures and all of that. Everyone asks us if it must have been very weird, but for me, I don’t think so. It’s completely natural. Everyone should have their own avatar.”

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They also captured their original essence on the album

As ABBA’s Voyage performances capture their original essence, so does the album. Ulvaeus told the Guardian that he and ABBA wrote their Voyage tracks “absolutely trend-blind.” Meaning they didn’t look at any contemporary music for inspiration. The group wanted to capture their original essence in the new songs.

They also chose to do that because, Andersson admitted, “in contemporary stuff, there’s nothing to feel I could hang on to, nothing I could emulate.”

“We decided early on that we’re not going to look at anything else,” Ulvaeus said of the current charts. “We’re just going to do the songs, the best songs we can right now. That meant writing lyrics I could get some of my thoughts of these past 40 years into, and add some kind of depth that, hopefully, comes with age and that makes it different from the lyrics I wrote 40 years ago.”

Both the immersive experience and the album are getting love. Voyage is nominated for four Grammy awards at the 2023 Grammys, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year (“Don’t Shut Me Down”), Best Pop Duo/Group Performance (“Don’t Shut Me Down”), and Best Pop Vocal Album.

Fans will get the chance to see ABBA perform as their Abbatars until November 2023. It’s the last time ABBA, in any form, will play to audiences.

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