Sights and sounds of Swedish supergroup

A GROUP which has won accolades for their tribute to the works of Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad (otherwise known as ABBA) are performing at the Kenton Theatre on Wednesday.

21st Century ABBA comprises Nina Marie Johnson (Agnetha), Marcus Tate (Björn), Greg Baker (Benny) and Indrija Kustovaite (Frida). They will be joined by “Magic” Martin on drums.

Nina says: “We do all of ABBA’s biggest hits, so if you’re coming to see our show, you’re not going to go away empty-handed. If you’ve got a favourite ABBA song, the chances are we are doing it. We do lots of costume changes, so that’s another really lovely thing. ABBA are really famous for having their costumes, their outfits, and we try and fit as many as we can into our show.

“Chances are that not only will you get the songs that you want, you’ll get the costumes that you want. When we turn up to a show, it is quite clear we are the ABBA band because I do have long blonde hair, Indrija does have Frida’s dark hair, our Benny does have the beard and our Björn is just quite Björn-like.

“We’re an international band, we were in Qatar a few weeks ago, we’re in Switzerland in a couple of weeks. We’ve been to France, Spain, Russia, Israel, Jordan, Romania, all in the past year or so, so we do travel all over the world and, of course, we love performing in the UK, too.”

Having met and started to work together in 1969 and forming the band in 1972 (taking the name from their combined first initials), the four members of the original Swedish supergroup ABBA first became famous in the UK when their song Waterloo became a hit at the Eurovision Song Contest 1974.

Agnetha and Björn were married in 1971 and Frida and Benny tied the knot seven years later.

The band went on to have nine No 1 singles and 10 No 1 albums in the UK, with songs such as Mamma Mia, Dancing Queen, Fernando, Money, Money, Money, Knowing Me, Knowing You, The Name of the Game, Thank You for the Music, Take a Chance on Me, Chiquitita, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!, Voulez-Vous, Super Trouper, Lay All Your Love On Me and The Winner Takes it All becoming dancefloor and singalong classics.

Both relationships had broken up by the early Eighties but the band were seen as a group in public together around the launch of jukebox musical romcom Mamma Mia! in 2000, which was written around their songs.

In 2021, they released a comeback album, Voyage, and now ABBA Voyage is the name of an ongoing concert at the ABBA Arena in London, where a live
10-piece band is accompanied by three-dimensional digital avatars of the four singers.

Nina has loved the music of ABBA since she was a child.

She says: “ABBA has a song, Nina, Pretty Ballerina, and my uncle used to sing that to me when I was little, so ABBA was kind of part of my life right from the beginning.

“My nan had the Super Trouper album and I used to drive her mad by playing it constantly, so I think she’s quite pleased that all those years of having to listen to the same album over and over, at least I’ve made a career out of it.

“The band has been going for five years, since 2019, but actually we’ve been doing ABBA for years.

“I headhunted all of the band members. A lot of us were doing ABBA for a long time before and knew each other but weren’t in a band together and when I put my band together I wanted to get the best people I could, so I took the people who I thought would be best for the band. I essentially approached people who I’d worked with in the past who I thought were really good to see if they wanted to come and be in my band and luckily they did, so that’s how it started.

“In our previous ABBA band, Marcus and I won the top ABBA tribute band from the Agent’s Association UK many years in a row, every year from 2013 to 2018.

“Then Marcus and I wanted a fully live band and so we split apart, but obviously we’re still very proud of getting that award. The award stopped running, so it wasn’t possible to win after that. We’ve recently been featured in a book about ABBA that’s been written.

“They start the book off by saying that they went to see us at a festival and loved it so much it inspired them to write a book about ABBA and their fandom to ABBA which is really nice.”

• 21st Century ABBA play the Kenton Theatre on Wednesday, December 18 at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £25 and the show has a running time of two hours. For more information, call the box office on (01491) 525050 or visit thekenton.org.uk