Happy 75th Birthday, Frida!

 Wishing the happiest of birthdays to the lovely Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who turns 75 today!  I hope she has an amazing day celebrating with her friends and family!! <3

As usual, I have a speedpaint video as well for you all to enjoy. :3

Happy 9th birthday, Bjorn Uldollus!

 Today marks 9 years since I finished my homemade Bjorn doll in the middle of a snowstorm with no power, lol.  Still can't believe it's been 9 years!!

Agnetha So Long Gif

 In April of 2017 I was messing around with some of the features of my drawing program, Clip Studio Paint, and wanted to see if I could maybe make an animated GIF of some sort.  While I was working on that, I decided to make it ABBA themed because why not and since when do I not make everything ABBA themed, haha.  So I attempted to make an animated gif of the So Long Dance Routine.  I had big ideas but I never got around to doing the whole thing and as a result only got around to drawing Agnetha and not Frida as well, and also never got around to doing all the line art and making it look nice and colorful.  Anyways, today I finally got around to exporting it.  It's not the best thing, but for a first try it's not bad. :)

New ABBA Drawing

 It's been a while since I've had time to really sit down and work on a realistic drawing.  I so rarely have inspiration or the attention span to work on long portraits anymore, but when I do, I think I do a pretty good job.  For fun, my sister and I decided to work on this drawing of my favorite four Swedes.  We're both good artists yet we've never collaborated like this before.  So here is my most recent drawing of ABBA, drawn with graphite pencils and a touch of a white gelly roll. :)

In other news, I've mentioned this so many times, but can you believe that this year I've officially been an ABBA fan of 10 years??  I can't believe I've devoted almost half my life to this band, but hey, it's been the best and I have no plans of stopping anytime soon. :)

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...