Fifty per cent of ABBA - Eurovision's most famous winners - to play Hyde Park

By Jamie McLoughlin on Jul 6, 09 08:48 AM

It may be 27 years since ABBA recorded new material - but Eurovision's most famous champions still have a hold over audiences and headline writers across the globe.

Today, Benny - the man who came up with most of the tunes - releases his first English language album in the UK for years. The Benny Andersson Band is a group of musicians who concentrate on the more traditional side of Swedish music. In a BBC interview with Jonathan Ross last week, Benny made it quite clear that if you turn up at one of BAB's live shows expecting to hear melodic pop fresh from an ABBA-shaped mould, you'll be disappointed.

A fan produced video of Story Of A Heart from YouTube

However, the first single from the album - and its title track - The Story of a Heart, with lyrics by his fellow B in ABBA, Bjorn Ulvaeus, does sound a lot like the sort of stuff the lads anf their wives/ex-wives were coming up with towards the end of their career (especially The Visitors album), when the pull of musical theatre which eventually led Benny and Bjorn to co-write Chess began to blur with their pop songwriting.

But ABBA fans need not despair. Oh, no...

Benny and Bjorn will be in London's Hyde Park on September 13 to take part in a live concert with special guest vocalists performing the biggest hits from the ABBA songbook.

Called Thank You For The Music... A Celebration Of The Music Of Abba, it will be hosted by BBC Radio 2 and Boom Bang a Blog is going to stick its neck out and bet you all 20p that Elaine Paige is one of those belting out a tune. But probably not Voulez Vous.

It's the closest Britain is ever going to get to have an ABBA reunion concert. There were rumours that the Swedish superstars would reform to fill the 50 slots in the O2 concert schedule left vacant by Michael Jackson's sudden death - but Benny himself said in his Jonathon Ross interview that wouldn't happen.

Boom Bang a Blog is certainly going to try for a ticket to the Hyde Park show (assuming it's not a turn-up-with-your-picnic-and-a-blanket job with it being a BBC production). It all sounds marvellous fun.