(Credits: Far Out / ABBA Voyage)

In 1977, ABBA released ‘Thank You For The Music’, a song that pays homage to the transformative power contained within sound. It’s something I can wholeheartedly get on board with, as through music, the mundane becomes extraordinary, complicated situations are made sense of, and an added element of life is present. ABBA has been at the forefront of all three of these pros, as their sound has filled arenas, broken hearts, and worn down the soles of dancing shoes for decades. However, time passes, and the band haven’t made a substantial peep in years, yet we persist in thanking them. It’s time to call out the biggest con artists in music, who are killing the art form in their blatant exploitation of it. 

Who is to say why people love music? Different reasons impact everyone; however, the live experience is something that connects lovers of sound worldwide. The fact that you’re there, in the same room as this person who has engaged in the transformative power of music and made your life better for it, and the fact that that room is shared by others who feel the same way, is a feeling with nothing akin to it. Music is the most connective of all art forms, as the feelings you share with strangers in the room at a gig are so much more intricate than those in a cinema, theatre or art gallery.

Why is music important? Despite many potential answers, here is mine. In trying to find out why love songs resonate in such a massive way, sociologist Thomas J. Scheff wrote in his book What’s Love Got to Do with It? Emotions and Relationships in Popular Songs, “In [many] years of teaching college students, I couldn’t help but notice that for many of them, popular songs held a special meaning, as they did to me when I was their age.”

He continued, “Popular love lyrics present a picture of an imagined social-emotional world, and modern societies tend to ignore this world. Since modern societies are highly individualistic, the nature of relationships usually takes a backseat. Modern societies focus on the self-reliant individual.”

When we listen to music, we experience internal thoughts conveyed externally. Feelings we possess and hold in our hearts suddenly are all over the charts, with people everywhere connecting with them enough to buy the record, propel the writer to stardom, and validate our feelings in the most beautiful way. In other words, music is important because it makes what is fundamentally a lonely world less so.

When you understand music’s important role in our psyche, you begin to understand why gigs mean so much. You have a drink and a dance, celebrating in a shared love of the song and the artist. It’s one of the most wholesome experiences out there, and it is well and truly magical. There is a reason why so many artists decide they want to make music after seeing their favourite performer live. They experience something incomparable; of course, the natural reaction is to try and recreate that feeling for others.

That connection with live music and the fact that it inspires so many musicians is why I will never understand why anybody would consent to have a hologram of themselves made to replace the live experience. It’s why I hate ABBA despite them having some top-tier bangers. And it’s why I worry about the future of the live music industry.

For those who aren’t aware (I envy you), on May 27th, 2022, ABBA opened ABBA Voyage in Newham, London. It’s a purpose-built arena where a show every night contains ABBA’s greatest hits performed by holograms. It’s essentially a DJ set with a live band that is being marketed as the world’s greatest disco. It sounds harmless enough—it could even be construed as a bit of fun—but the success of the show has set a dangerous precedent.

The show has been running for two years now and hasn’t given any signs of slowing down. With speculation of heading to other cities afterwards, ABBA has shown other artists that it can actually be a lot more profitable to pack in live performances and instead have the holograms do the work. Kiss has already gotten on board, and with so many legends going into retirement and teetering on the edge of their final tours, we will likely see more artists announce Voyage-like gigs, which sets a dangerous precedent for the future of music.

“But Dale,” you ask, “Music is universal, and a lot of young people never got a chance to see these artists in their prime; surely it’s good if they get the next best thing?” No. Shut up. Music, like all art, needs to evolve, and that means bands have to retire and stop touring to allow others to have their time to shine. If we make the greatest hits DJ sets an intrinsic part of modern music, then it will never progress, and we will be stuck in a sequined heavy time loop.

Essentially, as long as an artist has the hits, they can turn their live show into a holographic disco. This means musicians will have an incentive to make as much music as possible in the hope that enough songs will stick and ensure that a crowd will gather for an interactive gig. Music will dip in quality, and the live show will all but disappear. Not to mention, a lot of live musicians would likely opt to perform residencies at these hologram shows as well. Given the current volatile nature of the music industry, people would likely rather have a stable job playing Kiss songs than make their own music. New music will plateau, the connection offered by live gigs will diminish, and it all started due to ABBA’s laziness. 

The success of this show is truly baffling. Let’s look at the price of a ticket compared to what you’re getting. Tickets to ABBA Voyage start at £55, but these are only available if you book far in advance. Current tickets for the next week of shows are over £100, with the most expensive reaching heights of £198 each. On top of that, you will have tickets to London and accommodation, so you are looking at a blanket fee of around £500. In an age where concert ticket prices come under constant scrutiny, and artists like Olivia Rodrigo are put under the microscope for charging £90 for a seated ticket, let’s all gain a bit of perspective. At least Rodrigo is showing up with a team of backing dancers and musicians, all willing to work their arses off to put on a decent gig. Contrast that with ABBA Voyage, where you are watching projections of light and the guy from Klaxons playing a half-arsed cover of ‘Dancing Queen’. 

The use of holograms also encourages general laziness in relation to all of ABBA’s work. Their most recent album, also called Voyage, was the most lacklustre and dull grasp at pop that the band have ever done. They couldn’t even be arsed to take to the stage at Eurovision to deliver a speech about the competition that helped them rise to fame. Instead, they had the holograms do it in a VR-infused nightmare that has disrupted sleep across Europe since. And still, we praise them.

It’s time to call ABBA out on this dystopian bullshit they are pioneering. What is branded as a fun disco is daylight robbery, which encourages laziness within the world of music and robs the public of the artistic elements that make sound so beautiful in the first place. We need to stop thanking ABBA for the music and start asking them where it’s gone, otherwise we can say bon voyage to the most universal and beautiful art form there is.

(Since publishing this article, Far Out has been made aware that ABBA Voyage avatars are not holograms but are “Digital versions of ABBA… created through revolutionary motion capture performance techniques,” so I suppose that’s okay then).