Björn Again and Again: Inside the Enduring Appeal of the ABBA Tribute Phenomenon

Tribute bands have been a big part of popular culture for decades. Any night of the week, somewhere, you’ll find a band paying homage to the giants of rock and pop. In many ways, it’s no different to seeing a string quartet playing Vivaldi. Whether it’s Riders on the Storm, The Bootleg Beatles, The Australian Pink Floyd Show or Bowie tribute The Thin White Ukes, audiences clearly have an appetite for seeing the music of their long-retired heroes brought back to the stage. ABBA have taken the concept several steps further with Voyage, their London-based avatar show. Still, they have to compete with one of the world’s great tribute acts — and the one with possibly the best name to boot: Björn Again. After recently filling rooms across multiple nights in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, the faux Swedes are back on home soil, touring Australia with their ABBA Forever show.

A smidge over five decades ago ABBA stormed to the top of pop’s Mount Olympus by winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. In the English seaside town of Brighton, nothing could stop the four Swedes instant classic ‘Waterloo’ from taking out top honours ahead of a strong contemporaneous line up that included Olivia Newton-John representing England with ‘Long Live Love’. 

Despite that success, global domination wasn’t immediate. ABBA had to overcome reluctant radio programmers and snooty music press long before the likes of Pete Townsend and Elvis Costello sang their praises citing  ’S.O.S’ for its’ pop brilliance. 

An early ABBA adopter was Molly Meldrum who famously spun ‘Mamma Mia’ on Countdown. The rest of Australia took heed and ABBA never looked back. 

Like many of the second and third wave of pop/rock giants, ABBA as a touring force have long since hung up their platform boots. They have their Voyager show currently playing in London that is wooing crowds with ABBA avatars. But if you want to see and hear the band live, you’ll have to take Benny Andersson’s advice ‘and go and see Bjorn Again’ as it’s the closest you’ll get. 

Starting out at The Tote in Melbourne in 1989,  Bjorn Again has played over five thousand shows. Along the way they’ve opened for the Spice Girls, played everywhere from the Sydney Opera House and Glastonbury to Russell Crowe’s first wedding. With thirty five years of gigs under the belt, calling Bjorn Again a ‘tribute’ band feels dismissive. If anything, it’s a celebration of one of the finest catalogs in pop history. 

Their current ABBA Forever Tour is more of an immersive concert/theatre experience. The casting of the four leads Jodie Thornton (Agnetha), Laura Davidson (Anni-Frid) Ashley Reeder (Benny) and Rhys Warden (Bjorn) is note perfect. So is the sense of humour and the wonky Swedish accents. 

ABBA isn’t alone in the world of homage. Elvis Presley impersonators or tribute acts are an industry and the same can be said of The Beatles, Talking Heads, The Doors and pretty much every other major artist you can think of. Who could forget the clever merging of Led Zeppelin and reggae that was manifest with the mighty Dread Zeppelin. 

Late last year I saw Britain’s The Doors Alive along with a thousand other people at the Tivoli in Brisbane. The first half of the show – with the stage too well lit – felt like watching a very good cover band. By the second half their frontman had morphed into the Lizard King himself. 

There’s also a growing trend for tribute bands to be built around someone once associated with the original group, such as the Dire Straits Experience, who toured recently, featuring Chris White who played sax with the real thing. Robin A Smith has toured Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells without Oldfield but with his imprimatur. 

But Bjorn Again – in their field – sits atop their own Olympus. The show starts with a video montage of ABBA’s highs and touring life, before morphing into Bjorn Again replicating key moments in the band’s career. The house lights dim and Thornton and Davidson bound on stage to join a band already in full flight with the same zeal the original girls took to their Eurovision moment fifty years ago. 

The attention to detail is central to the Björn Again experience. The choreography, staging, vocal arrangements and costumes all evoke ABBA’s original presentation, with enough costume changes to rival a Diana Ross show. A typical set reaches across the catalogue, moving from songs such as “Super Trouper,” “Honey Honey,” “S.O.S.” and “Knowing Me, Knowing You” to the ballads “I Have a Dream,” “The Winner Takes It All” and “Thank You for the Music.”

After the interval, the emphasis tends to shift towards ABBA’s more dancefloor-friendly material. “Does Your Mother Know” and “Money, Money, Money” sit alongside the relatively deeper cut “Rock Me,” while the show’s “Björn” and “Benny” have even been known to fill a costume-change break with Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

Then it’s back to ABBA, with “Agnetha” and “Frida” leading the ensemble through the disco rush of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” and “Voulez-Vous.” These are songs that have never really left popular culture, being rediscovered by successive generations while retaining an extraordinary hold over the audiences who first heard them.

It explains Björn Again’s longevity. Tribute acts trade partly in nostalgia, but the best of them have to do something more: meet the expectations attached to much-loved music while making it feel alive in the present.

The costumes, accents and humour are part of the theatre, but underneath it all is a catalogue of songs with an apparently inexhaustible capacity to generate joy.

Tour Dates: https://www.bjornagain.com.au/events/