50 years in the past Saturday, a Swedish group modified the face of pop music ceaselessly.

And in 2024, there isn’t a higher approach of actually understanding their affect than on the Abba Area in East London.

The mere concept of Abba Voyage would have been nothing greater than essentially the most far-fetched reaches of sci-fi when Abba first stepped on stage at Eurovision 1974 in Brighton.

Now, watching the Abba-tars carry out on stage and discuss to audiences between songs, it looks like we’ve invented a time machine.

On Saturday evening I headed to Pudding Mill Lane with 3,000 different Abba followers (and one one that declared he didn’t even like Abba, was merely in awe of the expertise), to look at Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson on the top of their fame.

It wasn’t my first time at Abba Voyage, however the identical goosebumps crept up my arms because the lights shone on the 4 figures on stage, and remained via the breathtaking 90 minutes of music, shifting via all of the eras of their iconic profession.

And all of it goes again to the start: dressed within the iconic glowing outfits, an Abba-tar recollects performing Waterloo in Brighton and the way, shockingly, the UK awarded them nil factors.

The thousands-strong crowd let loose a roar of boos, horrified that such a factor may ever have occurred.

As a result of there’s actually nobody as iconic as Abba: their songs have sparked musicals carried out everywhere in the world, star-studded movies, and now a groundbreaking futuristic expertise not like something that’s ever come earlier than.

There are rumours Voyage will probably be heading to the US and past, however a spokesperson assured Metro.co.uk that even when this occurs, it is going to nonetheless stay in London.

And thank God for that, as a result of two years on from the opening evening in Pudding Mill Lane, the urge for food for Abba Voyage remains to be insatiable: nearly everybody I spoke to on the evening had been there for the second, third or fourth time, and I’m already trying ahead to the subsequent outing.

You additionally by no means know who you’ll stumble upon at an evening at Abba Voyage: Saturday evening noticed Rylan Clark, Mae Muller, Conchita Wurst and Bambie Thug among the many revellers, and even Louis Theroux was noticed bopping away to Voulez Vous.

Eurovision remains to be iconic, however nobody earlier than or since has ever had the identical affect as Abba did 50 years in the past.

Voyage rightfully locations them in a person corridor of fame that no different music act can declare.

When you’ve been on the fence or pushing aside going, that is your signal: Abba Voyage is an completely distinctive expertise paying tribute to an completely distinctive band.

And as quickly because the lights come on on the finish of the present, you’ll already be planning your subsequent journey, all the way in which again to Waterloo 1974.

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