Benny Andersson has revealed that Abba’s new song ‘Don’t shut me down’ was inspired by Tina Charles.

In an interview with Zoe Ball on her BBC Radio 2 Breakfast show, Benny said:

The inspiration for the song comes from when I was watching a TV Crime Drama with Stellan Skarsgård and my favourite actress Nicola Walker. I think it was called River and they were using the song from ‘I love to love’ (by) Tina Charles from the 70’s and (I was thinking) “Yeah. Maybe we should do something like that just to show people that we remember the 70’s”.

Benny also revealed how he approached Agnetha and Anni-Frid on putting together some new songs saying:

Once we decided that we should do this concert at The Olympic Park, we said that if we’d had gone there (to the reunion concert) in the flesh we would’ve had a couple of new songs wouldn’t we? So I called Frida and Agnetha and I said “What do you say girls?” (on doing some new material) and they said “yes” and I was abit flabbergasted by that.. We decided that and we recorded two new songs and those are the songs that are out.

You can see the full interview with Benny by clicking here, and skipping to around 1:39:30

We revealed earlier how the UK singer Raya will be working as one of Abba’s backing singers, which you can read more about by clicking here. You can also buy tickets to the new concert by clicking here.

You can see the lyric video for Abba’s new song ‘Don’t shut me down’ below, aswell as the band’s other song ‘I still have faith in you’ below this:

What do you think of Abba’s new songs? Will you be attending Abba’s new concert? Let us know in the comments section below!