I had hoped Abba would come on stage at Malmo – Swedish Eurovision star

Swedish interval act Benjamin Ingrosso said he had hopes that Abba would come on stage at Malmo to celebrate their 50th anniversary of winning the competition, but thinks this is unlikely to happen.

Ingrosso, a former Eurovision hopeful who represented Sweden in 2014 with Dance You Off and made the final, will perform his new single Look Who’s Laughing Now during Tuesday’s semi-final.

Ireland’s double-winner Johnny Logan is also on an interval act, while former Eurovision acts Eleni Foureira, Eric Saade and Chanel will be performing the United By Music opening number.

The contest is being held as Swedish group Abba celebrate half a century since they won in 1974 with Waterloo in Brighton.

They told BBC’s Newsnight that there is “no way” the group will even walk on stage or reunite together during the 2024 event.

Ingrosso told the PA news agency: “I really hope that all the four of them would come up on stage, I don’t think they will, though because they never say yes to anything like this.

“But I mean, and I kind of like was like, what if they came? What if they like the avatars came on stage, but I think it costs too much.

“But I just think that there will probably be some medleys and people will sing the songs and do like tributes like that, I guess, (the) covers of the best hits.

“And I would love to see someone sing… like Waterloo, do something with that.”

He also said that the UK has ” huge potential” this year with British singer and actor Olly Alexander competing with Dizzy.

“I mean, Olly is doing a great job and the setting is amazing and the song is amazing and he’s so talented and so I think it was a great choice to pick him as your artist for England,” Ingrosso added.

He also said that his loyalty is divided between Norwegian-born twin singers Marcus & Martinus, who are hoping to earn a win for Sweden, Italy’s Angelina Mango as he is half-Italian and Alexander, who he worked with on a remix of Kite.

Giving a sneak peak at their performance, the 26-year-old singer also said: “I’m bringing like a seven-minute full-on entertainment show, I would say with extra everything and I brought my big band and my dancers and it’s visually also hopefully spectacular.

“And I think for the Eurovision fans that have been following Eurovision for many years that remembered me from Dance You Off in 2018 will probably not recognise me anymore because I grew beard and I have longer hair and I’m actually a different artist now than I was back in 2018.

“So I think it’s also like super exciting for me to perform on this specific like stage because that number that I did with that Dance You Off was was more like a music video kind of thing and I was alone on stage and I was younger and and now I’ve evolved as an artist so I think they will see that I’ve worked a lot on my performance as as a performer.”

Look Who’s Laughing Now will be officially released on May 31.