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As Agnetha’s two English solo albums and album of Christmas songs with her daughter saw their release in remastered format in the last month, I thought it might be a good opportunity to re-evaluate my least favorite of Agnetha’s post-ABBA solo albums, since it seems that so many ABBA fans (especially ones from Australia) seem to adore the album when I just see a steaming pile of crap.

Starting with the album cover we see an over the shoulder look back at the camera from Agnetha. She’s wearing a dark colored outfit and matching hat in front of an almost equally dark background leaving just her face staring over that shoulder in a coy but almost condescending look meant to emphasize her eyes as she stares at the camera. It almost looks like she’s a flight attendant who turned to give you a dirty stare for daring to ask her to get a drink for you just moments before she ignores you for half an hour in hopes you’ll forget you asked her for something in the first place. To the left quarter of the cover we have a light colored strip for which Agnetha’s name appears as plain as possible in a boring font choice that seems to strip Agnetha of any worldwide stature she gained as one of the voices of ABBA.

The only flair for the exotic on Agnetha’s “Eyes Of A Woman” album cover is the font choice for the title “Eyes Of A Woman” and it gets buried in the lower left hand corner, where no one will ever see it. Regardless of it being printed on a CD booklet or a 12” album, the album title is wasted in the lower left hand corner. Most store display racks for CDs and albums in the days of albums were staggered in such a way that to make the rack look more completely filled, the tops of albums could be seen but the bottoms would be hidden away behind the tops of the albums in the lower section directly in front. The goal is to emphasize the albums not the rack as a fixture to display them. Unfortunately, it is a boring cover for a pretty much boring album.

As we move beyond the album cover and flip it over, we’re treated to a much better and attractive photo of Agnetha with a wonderful smile. As we see a little more of her front side and see a pearl necklace that compliments her outfit and gives us the impression she’s more of a high class passenger on the airline instead of it’s bitchy flight attendant. The only detractor to this photo is that she’s not directly looking at the camera meaning this much better photo couldn’t be the album cover if the title of the album was to be “Eyes Of A Woman.” Polar completely wasted an opportunity to use a truly great photo of Agnetha.

Playing the album, we start out with One Way Love. A brassy song penned by Jeff Lynne of ELO fame. Perhaps ELO should have kept the song, it’s just not something that works well for Agnetha and when she does her own backing vocals it just serves as a showcase for how much Agnetha truly needed Frida to sound brilliant. And in light of the “Behind the Blonde” special about Agnetha, this song seems to be Gert van Der Graaf’s theme song. It’s almost comical to hear this song in light of that tabloid television special.

Eyes Of A Woman as the title track for the album is a little bit better than One Way Love, but it almost sounds like a Frankenstein-esque ingredient list. Mix the eyes of a woman, with one heart of a child and a soul of a gypsy and out will come some grotesque way to cherish the wild. And even though the song starts as kind of a story about another woman trying to console some unspecified pain, I think that woman should be slapped for taking such a round about way to say sometimes life sucks. Get to the point and save us from the Frankenstein cooking lesson.

Moving on to an island flavored Just One Heart, we head into to traditional pre-ABBA Agnetha fluff. A lovey-dovey, sappy, piece of cavity inducing cotton candy about the mythical “one heart” that can unlock all the magic of Disney-esque wonder. It’s a fairy tale and perhaps the songwriters needed to listen to a few more Disney songs before writing this song. If they had taken proper notes from the Disney song writers, the song could be Oscar award worthy. This song, however, is trying to score a baseball home run on a soccer field. It’s just a train wreck waiting to happen, not even Agnetha can save it.

I Won’t Let You Go is probably the song Gert van Der Graaf wishes was Agnetha’s song for him. This is one of the few songs from this album I do like, but I’m still not a big fan of clingy relationships and this one has the clinginess of a roll of stretch wrap. This type of song really isn’t much of a stretch for Agnetha either, with all the lovey-dovey songs of her youth.

The Angels Cry is probably the worst song on the album. Perhaps it should have been renamed The Angels Whine. The whininess of Agnetha’s voice as she approaches the choruses makes me long for a shot gun to shoot the angels out of the sky. I hope the crack Agnetha was on while recording this song was good, because the song sure isn’t.

Giving The Angels Cry a run for its money as the worst song on the album is Click Track. This song sounds like a drug trip gone horribly wrong. Over emphasizing Agnetha’s Swedish accent for the opening lines of the song sounds almost patronizing and you spend the rest of the song wondering whether Agnetha’s got pleasure confused with business and vice versa.

We Should Be Together is another song I like but I really shouldn’t. Really the song is barely good enough to be background music for a stretching section of a Jane Fonda work out video, but this one just has guilty pleasure written all over it. Shame though we are seven songs into the album and this is only the second decent song!

Next up is I Won’t Be Leaving You which is a snoozer classic that I’m sure would help cure any insomniac into a deep and restful sleep just by the sheer boredom of the song. I just hope the guy in the song she’s singing to had the sense to say, I don’t want you!

Just from the title Save Me (Why Don’t Ya) it’s clear this is another “helpless victim” song that is very typical fare for Agnetha. Here the music kind of betrays that image slightly as she presents only a slightly stronger image, but can we just get past the begging for help?

I Keep Turning Off Lights makes you just want to thank Agnetha for her energy conservation tactics but the song isn’t about being energy conscious, but hopelessly getting stuck in the same bad situation time after time. How about quit turning off the lights and maybe turning one on to indicate you’ve gotten a clue and learned from your mistake?

Bringing back yet another snoozer classic to close out the album Agnetha tries to convince us that We Move As One and yet she doesn’t sound like she’s participating. The song is even more cheesy and cliché-ish than “The Way Old Friends Do” from ABBA’s “Super Trouper” album but Benny and Björn always had a knack for pushing the envelope very close to the edge of cheesiness without quite crossing that line. Here Agnetha brazenly crosses it and doesn’t look back. Good on her.

Well despite the improved sound of the remastering of the album and the addition of a couple more songs I actually like as bonus tracks, I hate to say that Agnetha’s “Eyes Of A Woman” is still a steaming pile of crap in my opinion and will quickly be grabbing Agnetha’s “My Colouring Book” to restore my faith that it is possible for Agnetha to sing brilliant songs outside of ABBA.