Why tying the new song to the virtual tour is a good thing

 There hasn't been any news on ABBA's new songs as of late - last I heard was that the songs were getting delayed again for the who-knows-how-many time since the first announcement that ABBA were making new music.  As every day passes, unsure of when our ears will be blessed with ABBA's amazing music again, there's more of a desire for the songs to be released sooner rather than later.  Some people wish for ABBA to just release the new songs independent of the virtual tour.  They don't understand why ABBA are tying the new songs to the tour when they aren't even interested in seeing the tour.  A lot of people think the tour should just be scrapped.  I completely understand the frustration, however, I personally love the idea of a virtual tour, as I've said a few times on this blog already.  It gives the ABBA members the opportunity to "tour" again, as their younger selves without actually having to go through all the stress of actually touring around the world.  

The question is, why do ABBA need to tie their new songs to the tour?  Why do we need to hear new material during the show when fans would be just as happy to hear the same old songs that we all know and love?

As I've been doing a lot of research for a video series that I started about a year ago which involves watching a lot of interviews, I came across this clip which pretty much gives us the answer:

Based on this interview from 1977, ABBA feel like their shows would be boring without any new material.  That is why the 1977 tour has a half hour of new music presented in the Girl with the Golden Hair mini-musical.  

Obviously they felt the same way when they did the 1979 tour two years later, with The Way Old Friends Do.

 

In both cases, I think the audience were quite thrilled to hear new songs that had never been heard before ever.

Clearly ABBA still have the same philosophy ~40 years later, which is why they're releasing new songs

for the virtual tour.  It could be argued that maybe ABBA shouldn't have told us they had new songs and instead just announced the virtual tour, and then when we all go to the show, we get surprised with new music, however, imagine if ABBA had recorded new music and didn't tell us.  I think we'd all be pretty upset about that, haha.

Anyway, whether the new music comes out early 2021, or 2022, I'm excited and can't wait.  :D

 In regards to whether I think the virtual tour should be a permanent location somewhere or not, that's a whole different story...