Cyndi Lauper joins forces with ABBA Voyage firm for immersive concert experience

ADVERTISEMENT

Iconic pop singer Cyndi Lauper, who rose to fame in the 1980s with hits such as “Time After Time” and “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” has entered a partnership with the Swedish masterminds behind the immersive virtual concert ABBA Voyage.

The partnership, recently announced by the Pophouse Entertainment Group co-founded by ABBA singer Björn Ulvaeus, involves the acquisition of a majority share of the award-winning singer-songwriter’s music. 

Lauper said she agreed to the sale, for an undisclosed amount, when it became apparent the Swedish company wasn’t just in it for the money. “Most suits, when you tell them an idea, their eyes glaze over, they just want your greatest hits,” Lauper told the AP at the Pophouse headquarters in Stockholm earlier this month. 

“But these guys are a multimedia company, they’re not looking to just buy my catalog, they want to make something new.”

• Who’s on top of Apple Music's ۲۰۲۳ global song chart?
• Culture Re-View: The day ABBA achieved Eurovision glory

Abba perform at United Nations General Assembly, in New York, during taping of NBC-TV Special, "The Music for UNICEF concert" on ۹ January ۱۹۷۹.

Ron Frehm/AP

Cyndi Lauper arrives at the presentation of the Gershwin Prize hosted at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington on Wednesday, March 1, ۲۰۲۳.

Credit: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP

Four decades after her breakthrough solo album, the ۷۰-year-old Queens native is still brimming with ideas and the energy to bring them to stage.

Lauper said she’s not aiming to replicate the glittery supernova brought to stage in ABBA Voyage where stupefying technology offers digital avatars of the ABBA band members as they looked in their 1970s heyday, but rather an “immersive theatre piece” that transports audiences to the New York she grew up in.

“It’s about where I came from and the three women that were very influential in my life, my mom, my grandmother and my aunt,” she said.