It’s been 40 years since Swedish pop legends ABBA last put out an album, and though we’re still several months away from the release of their new record Voyage, it’s already setting records.
As Music Business Worldwide reports, Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad have broken a record in the U.K. after over 80,000 copies of Voyage were pre-ordered in just three days. According to Universal Music UK, that makes it the label’s biggest-ever album pre-order, breaking the previous records set by Take That with their Progress and III albums.
That’s kind of stunning when you consider it’s been four decades since ABBA has put out a new studio album, and disco hasn’t exactly retained its cultural relevance throughout those years. (Though of course, the success of 2008’s jukebox musical Mamma Mia! and its 2018 sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again — both of which relied exclusively on the ABBA catalog — has certainly helped to expose the group’s music to new generations of fans.)
The record-breaking number of preorders came last week after ABBA announced the forthcoming Nov. 5 release of Voyage and debuted two of its singles, “I Still Have Faith in You” and “Don’t Shut Me Down.” The group also announced the “ABBA Voyage” concert experience, which will feature digital avatars of the group’s four singers (not holograms, to be clear) performing along with a 10-piece live band. The digital versions were created over the course of “weeks and months” of motion capture by the band and a team of 850 people from George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic company.
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