Mama Mia! ABBA reunites to release new music after 35 years

Sweden’s legendary disco group, ABBA, on Friday announced that they have reunited to record two new songs, 35 years after their last single.

“We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did,” the group said in a statement on Instagram after repeated comments that they would never reunite.

They said they had recorded two new songs, one titled “I Still Have Faith In You”, and another unnamed track.

The quartet 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, who sold more than 400 million albums, has not been together on stage since 1986.

Abba’s spokesperson, Gorel Hanser, described the new songs, saying: “The sound will be familiar, but also modern.”

The studio sessions were “like old times. Easy as anything. It didn’t feel weird that they hadn’t been in the studio together for 35 years,” she told Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet.

But Hanser said the group would not perform live, other than as holograms in the forthcoming Abba Avatar tour.

“No, you can not expect them to join forces on stage again,” she said. “They will not do that.”

The band have resisted pressure to reform since they stopped recording together in 1982, despite a reported $1bn (£689m) offer to tour in 2000.

Formed in 1972, Abba were essentially a Swedish super group, consisting of songwriters Ulvaeus and Andersson from The Hep Stars and singers Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who had scored success as solo artists.

After winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo in 1974, the band sold almost 400 million singles and albums around the world.

Mamma Mia!, the musical based on their hits and produced by Ulvaeus and Andersson, has been seen by more than 50 million people.

During their most successful period, the band survived marriage break-ups between Ulvaeus and Faltskog, and Lyngstad and Andersson, but they finally called it a day in 1983.

Their final recording sessions, in 1982, produced the hits Under Attack and The Day Before You Came, which

featured on the compilation album The Singles.

Their last public performance came three years later on the Swedish version of TV show This Is Your Life, which honoured their manager Stig Anderson.