Agnetha's album: NEWS from ABBAMAIL (April 2004)  New Agnetha picture from the Austrian magazine "Woman" (thanks to ABBAMAILer Harry Ehler, Austria)
April 29, 2004
AGNETHA FOR TOTP2 Agnetha's video for IF I THOUGHT YOU'D EVER CHANGE YOUR MIND will be shown on the British television program, Top of the Pops 2 on Friday 7th May :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/lineup/
Thanks to ABBA fan Johan Tyvaert, Brussels, Belgium
YELLOW 4 TRACK AGNETHA HAS ALMIGHTY EDIT - Posted at 2:25 AM
This is the tracklist of the new yellow 4-track maxi CD single of IF I THOUGHT YOU'D EVER CHANGE YOUR MIND
1. if I thought you'd ever change your mind ( original version) 03:13
2. if I thought you'd ever change your mind ( Almighty radio edit) 03:50
3. if I thought you'd ever change your mind ( Almighty remix) 07:09
4. if I thought you'd ever change your mind ( Almighty dub) 07:10
The catalogue number is 5050467-3411-2-8
Thanks to ABBAMAILers Monique Hoevens and Theo van Dijk, The Netherlands
April 28, 2004
AUSSIE AGNETHA RELEASE DATE MOVES AGAIN - Posted at 5:08 PM
Just spoke to Warner Music in Sydney and My Colouring Book is now slated for release on 21 May 2004, which is another week later.
The single isn't coming out, as we know.
She also said, "There's a special on A Current Affair tonight that you might want to catch!"
I can't believe the show is going to show this, and the album and single aren't out. What a total waste of the promotional opportunity!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Trent Nickson, Sydney, Australia
AGNETHA ON AUSSIE TV TONIGHT - Posted at 3:44 PM
Channel 9's A Current Affair will be premiering the "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind" video tonight
(Wednesday).
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Jason Dann, Sydney, Australia
April 27, 2004
AGNETHA ON DUTCH BOX Posted at 10:45 PM
April 29th, this Thursday, Agnetha's Almighty Mixes of "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind" will be released as a 4-track jewel-case CD-single.
On that same day, Music Channel 'The Box' will make her 'BOX-TOPPER', which means that her video will be played at least every hour!
'The Box' is an interactive Music Channel. It's on 24 hours a day. You can call the station, enter a 'video-clip-code' and the video of your choice will be played. During the hours that most people do other things
than watching TV, you might even get your request played 3,4,5 times in a row.(it works, I know, used to do that often after coming home after a 'night on the town', 5-6 o'clock Sundaymorning ;-), requesting my favourite video of that moment)
Their viewing-audience is young, age between 12 and 25. So Warner Music here in The Netherlands is doing a great job to promote this single I think.
If you want to take a look at their website (in Dutch) go to:
http://www.thebox.nl
The number you have to call to request Agnetha's video for "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind" is 0909-9798. Agnetha's 'video-clip-code' will be 920. This code will be activated Thursday April 29th.
I will recieve the "Arrival" Sound+Vision Edition tomorrow, the 3 releases of ABBA ("The Story", Dutch and English version and "The Definitive Collection") have been delayed 10 days.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Lex Corbach, Ten Boer, The Netherlands
AGNETHA EXPECTED TO HIT #1 IN SWEDEN - Posted at 10:33 PM
Here are a couple of translations of news stories from Musikindustrin.
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http://www.musikindustrin.nu/mi/smpage.fwx?page=198&NYHETER=4469
Agnetha Fältskog towards the top right away
Agnetha Fältskog's first album in 17 years, My Colouring Book [Metronome/Warner Music], looks like it will easily take over the number 1 spot on this week's hit chart. The album is selling very well in record stores throughout the country, and everything points to Agnetha soon enjoying a number 1 spot again on the Swedish sales chart.
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http://www.musikindustrin.nu/mi/smpage.fwx?page=198&NYHETER=4471
...and has already sold platinum
Agnetha Fältskog's very eagerly awaited comeback album My Colouring Book had already, before it was shipped to stores last week, been registered for gold- as well as platinum album. The album has been received with open arms by Swedish record buyers the past few days.
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Thanks to ABBAMAILer Claes Davidsson, Orlando, Florida, USA
AGNETHA REVIEW ON DOT MUSIC Posted at 10:30 PM
I just saw this fanstastic review of MCB at dotmusic.co.uk
Agnetha Fältskog - 'My Colouring Book' (Monday April 26, 2004 4:44 PM )
Released on 19/04/2004 Label: WEA
Any Abba biog will inform you that the world's greatest-ever pop group actually sprang from the Scandinavian folk scene, where all four members were already recording artists of some success.
That "My Colouring Book", blonde recluse Agnetha Fältskog's first solo album in over fifteen years, comprises covers of her favourite pre-Abba songs might, then, strike fear into the hearts of the 'Mamma Mia' masses, but a pleasant surprise awaits one and all.
Thanking everyone from Doris Day and Cilla Black to Simon & Garfunkel, Demis Roussos, The Beach Boys, Cliff Richards and Bing Crosby on the sleeve, "My Colouring Book" is a collection of well-known and obscure ballads that romanticizes heartbreak in the way only the Swedish can.
Of course, the skill in choosing such songs is in telling your story without having written a word of it. Anyone who had hoped Agnetha had busied herself with pottery and found fulfilment setting up an animal sanctuary, perhaps, will be disappointed. The last two decades have apparently been full of lost and impossible love... could anything be more romantic, in pop terms? Mais non.
Opener "My Colouring Book", previously recorded by Andy Williams, Barbra, Cliff, Dusty, Brenda Lee and Aretha - how's that for credentials? - could have been purpose-written for the project: "For those who fancy colouring books/And lots of people do/Here's a new one for you..." It's followed immediately by the album's stand-out moment, "When You Walk In The Room" (one of The Searchers' many hit Jackie DeShannon covers), rendered in an enormously satisfying Phil Spector style.
Thereafter, the first of two Cilla covers, a Beatles-y "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind", immeasurably improved simply through not being sung by the Scouse foghorn. "Sealed With A Kiss" is next, with a bewitching, Ry Cooder-tumbleweedy treatment that erodes all remembrance of Jason Donovan, then the straight 60s crooning of Petula Clark's "Love Me With All Your Heart" before "Fly Me To The Moon", which remains a slinky cabaret classic.
The Shangri-Las' "Past, Present And Future" is the first oddity, a spookily spoken-word affair that seems to storybook Agnetha's well-publicised stalker troubles ("Take a walk along the beach tonight?/I'd love to/But don't try to touch me..."). "A Fool Am I" is a belter in the Dusty Springfield mould; "I Can't Reach Your Heart" a piano-led song from a long-lost musical.
Elsewhere, "Sometimes When I'm Dreaming", replenishes the quirky quotient with its refrain of "I wake up screaming/Sometimes when I'm dreaming", before the second Cilla track, "The End Of The World" is successfully reclaimed as a shuffling Motown number.
The penultimate track, the little-known "Remember Me", could easily be an Abba outtake, before "What Now My Love", the Shirley Bassey showtune par excellence, closes proceedings with a bizarre yet effective "Where The Streets Have No Name" production job.
In short, "My Colouring Book" is a peerless resurrection of a pop
princess, to whom the modern-day equivalents cannot compare; she can sing, for starters - that wonderful, familiar soprano is high and clear in the mix throughout, and age has not wearied it. Oh, and she looks gorgeous on the sleeve, in that middle-aged, Joanna Lumley, better-than-ever way that makes mere mortals weep over their shallow gene pools and misspent years of sunbathing.
Would that all icons had the good grace to wait until they had an album of such quality to relaunch themselves - once again, Agnetha Fältskog has set the gold standard of pop.
8/10 stars by Emma Warren
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Andy Andrews, Conway Arkansas USA
PAUL CARTER'S UK REPORT - Posted at 10:22 PM
Here are some recent news pieces and articles that have gathered over the past couple of weeks:
This is the promotional schedule that Warner UK organised for Agnetha (before she cancelled):
22 April Parkinson
22 April GMTV
22 April This Morning
23 April Top of the Pops
25 April Breakfast with Frost
26 April Richard & Judy
26 April Sky News
26 April ITN News
26 April BBC News
26 April VH1
1 May BBC Music Live
Here are some more reviews and recent articles:
Daily Telegraph (17 April 2004)
A strong early contender for the turkey of the year award, My Colouring Book labours under a couple of tragic misapprehensions. First, that what the pop world needs in 2004 is another ragbag of tunes from the 1960s, orchestrally tortured beyond the reasonable demands of karaoke. And second, that because
she used to be one quarter of the phenomenal ABBA, Agnetha Fältskog ranks as a gifted balladeer who can carry off songs such as 'Fly Me To The Moon' and 'Sealed With A Kiss'. As we learn slowly and painfully over these and 10 other pieces, the brittle and brassy voice that worked so well blaring forth
triumphalist ABBA anthems is less effective when conveying more intimate, self-doubting sentiments.
Aside from the Searchers' hit 'When You Walk In The Room', whose perky melody just about survives a cruel rhythmic beating from the orchestra, the most successful item here is 'Past Present and Future', in which Agnetha talks us through her hopes and fears in a light Scandinavian accent that sounds easy on the ears for once, and almost sexy.
written by Robert Sandall
Mail on Sunday (18 April)
...Another reputation due for a rethink is ABBA's. With compilation packages, a slew of tribute acts and a thriving stage musical, ABBA constitute a flourishing, self-contained music industry second only to The
Beatles.
That's not all the two bands have in common. Alongside that of the Bee Gees, their catalogues make up the folk music of our time, the tunes we all instinctively respond to.
ABBA merit, if not the degree, then at least the type of critical reverence accorded to The Beatles. But they don't get it as their devotees are found at hen parties and karaoke nights rather than aftershow parties and quiz nights.
It is ABBA's fate to be misconstrued as tacky and fluffy. They had plenty of lapses, but their best songs (Voulez-Vous, The Winner Takes It All, The Day Before You Came) can encapsulate in four minutes the futility, hollowness, poetic desolation and very Scandinavian melancholy that would take their compatriot Ingmar Bergman two hours of torpid celluloid. No one in pop, not even Leonard Cohen, has struck closer at loneliness and loss. But because they did it in bad trousers, to a disco beat, they might as well not have
bothered.
That overtone of sorrow provides the one ABBA-like aspect discernible in Agnetha Fältskog's My Colouring Book, the first new music from any of the foursome in donkey's years. A collection of covers, all from the Sixties, it's something of a cabaret turn.
Fans who recognise in ABBA only the bounce and the glitz will be perplexed by this labour of love with its studiedly inflected vocal emulation of Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick.
It's not a bad record, by any means, although it has moments which are every bit as camp and corny as ABBA are mistakenly held to be. People who enjoy cocktail-lounge retro - a sizeable segment of the population just now - may take to it. (2/5)
Independent on Sunday (18 April)
The first crush of a generation, Agnetha Fältskog, the sad-eyed blonde in blue satin, has remained something of a recluse since the disintegration of ABBA, so My Colouring Book arrives as a surprise. For four years, Agnetha has been researching the songs of the 1960s for a personal project, which grew into an album of faithfully-rendered covers. Her voice is undiminished after 20 years and when she delivers the spoken bits in that shiver-inducing Swedish accent: "Take a walk along the beach tonight? Why not...but don't try to touch me", it touches you
written by Simon Price
SUNDAY LIFE STORY Posted at 11:05 PM
Desolate dancing queen
My John McGurk
25 April 2004
ARE Ulster music fans ready to Take A Chance again on ABBA's most enigmatic member, Agnetha Fältksog?
Or will the now 54-year-old Swedish grandmother meet her Waterloo in a music market place completely different from her Seventies' heyday?
Fältksog was the blonde bombshell with the most famous posterior in pop - a Dancing Queen who fulfilled countless schoolboys and drooling dads' Swedish vamp fantasies.
But as she cheekily winked her way through Take A Chance On Me, and sexily smiled through ABBA's glory days, Fältskog's real life unhappiness belied the shiny exterior.
Other than a bizarre boyfriend-turned-stalker relationship with a young Dutch fan, little has been heard of her... until now.
For Agnetha Fältksog has just released her first solo album in 17 years, My Colouring Book.
The build-up has been typically mysterious, with the notoriously private Fältksog pulling the plug on all promotion, just weeks before its release.
However, she has been astute enough to hook the release of her comeback album to the tide of nostalgia and affection these days for anything to do with ABBA.
Perhaps surprisingly, she hasn't chosen the easy camp disco comeback option, as My Colouring Book is shaped by a selection of middle of the road songs from her teenage days.
Even though its 13 tracks are mostly cover versions of Sixties' standards, My Colouring Book is a concept album in all but name - spine-chilling in its sense of melodic, melancholic desolation.
Only one song - When You Walk In The Room - approximates anything like the happy, pure pop of peak period ABBA.
But the influence of ABBA's loser in love stories - Knowing Me, Knowing You, The Winner Takes It All and The Day Before You Came - uncannily echoes throughout.
It's like Fältskog's highly personalised tracks of her tears - with other people's words spookily reflecting her apparently lonely state of mind.
Current single, If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind is an elegant, elegaic piece of baroque pop - with her voice eerily recapturing the yearning, plaintive performances of the past.
There are mistakes - as on the sort of old fashioned, string-drenched Eurovision-style ballad which ABBA did their best to obliterate - A Fool Am I.
But, for the most part, Fältskog's song choices and performances are flawless - oddly emulating the leftfield eccentricity which the likes of Bjork, Tori Amos and Kate Bush specialise in.
Her cover of the Brian Hyland hit, Sealed With A Kiss, comes complete with a shivering, twangy guitar riff which wouldn't be out of place in a blackly surreal David Lynch film.
Her spoken meditation on old romances and female frigidity on Past, Present and Future is extraordinary as she warns 'Don't try to touch me' in fairytale-turned-bad Ice Maiden tones.
The most surprising aspect of this superficially middle of the road set comes from its utterly desolate, virtually suicidal sentiments, more usually expressed by the likes of Nick Cave and PJ Harvey.
The stripped bare piano and stringed track, Sometimes When I'm Dreaming, is bleakly beautiful, with Fältskog's best vocal performance possessing lines such as 'nobody knew just how it feels to be me' with chilling conviction.
The best is kept for last - Fältskog's understated and subtly dramatic revision of the Shirley Bassey chestnut, What Now My Love, with insistent tribal drums and chiming, U2-like guitar.
Sometimes self-pitiful and sorrowful, Fältksog detonates any hackneyed notions that blondes have more fun. For her worldview is far bluer than the glammed-up eyeshadow of her youth.
ABBA's Swede dreams of old may have turned into real life nightmares for Fältksog. But, ironically, this tear-filled set is an ABBA-solute creative triumph.
My Colouring Book by Agnetha Fältksog is on WEA Records and is available now.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Kaarin Goodburn, Kettering, UK
RADIO2 = B-LIST RADIO1 = SNUB Posted at 5:37 PM
BBC2 has Agnetha's single on the B-list of songs to be played - yes, we all know that. After reaching #11 in the first week of release you might have thought she should have made the A-list. But no!
And BBC1's album show has snubbed Agnetha's album and - now we find out - her single too! The broadcast is available to listen to on the internet:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/index.shtml?hp_lhn
"Also in the same show, when he runs the new chart positions for singles, he skipped Agnetha's single. OK fair enough skip a track if it has plummeted from say 8 to 38, but dropping just 11 places does not warrant being skipped completely. You can hear the entirety of the show at the URL. If you do try to listen to the broadcast on the net, please don't skip the 15 or 5 minutes too much as you'll miss his brief mention of her. It truly is sickening."
Thanks to ABBA fan Diego, UK
Here is a great email sent by an ABBAMAIL site visitor to the BBC DJ:
"I was very disappointed today that you only played a short clip from Agnetha Faltskog's album.
It may not be to your taste but clearly it is to lots of music fans. A lot of new bands could only dream of
getting to #12 on the album charts. I listen to Radio 1 and new bands all the time, but I also like to hear
genuine legendary artists and I bought the new album from Agnetha and think it's great. It's a shame you
didn't play a track so others could hear it too. Afterall, your show is supposed to be reflecting the charts and she's made it to #12 with hardly any promotion, unlike lots of acts where its all promotion
and no talent. Hope you can correct it on next week's show.
Thanks.
best wishes,
Louise, Leicester, UK"
ABBAMAIL feels ABBA fans in the UK particularly should follow Louise's lead and make their feelings known. How about it guys? Sometimes being a fan means more than just listening to the music - it is also about standing up for what you believe in.
BBC1 SNUBS AGNETHA - Posted at 3:46 AM
Despite Agnetha's single hitting #11 in the UK charts and her album debuting at #12 - with very little airplay and no promotion - BBC1's Chart Show has chosen to snub Agnetha's achievement by not playing a track from My Colouring Book during their show.
If you would like to make your feelings known about this, please email your concerns to the DJ concerned:
wes@bbc.co.uk
Keep your comments clean and constructive but don't be afraid to express your feelings at this snub. And British citizens, it is your licence fee that pays for the BBC's existence and for the salaries of the programming staff and DJs like Wes. The BBC is meant to serve the citizens and licence fee payers of Britain, not dictate the the tastes of a few autocrats to the general public. You have every right to make your feelings known and you might try visiting the BBC web site and finding out the BBC Director General's feedback email address and dropping him a line.
Agnetha's album isn't going anywhere without further radio support. And her snubbing at the hands of the BBC's album chart show is highly inappropriate and unfair.
Graeme Read / ABBAMAIL Administration
FANTASTIC - AGNETHA #12 IN UK CHARTS - Posted at 2:44 AM
UK Album chart latest, Agnetha-My Colouring Book debuts at #12.
Radio 1 did not even play a full track from the album, just 10 seconds of the single.
Transcript of email sent to Wes the Radio 1 DJ announcing the chart now:
QUOTE
"Wes,
What's the matter, don't you like songs with melody? On your chart show today in the album run down, you did not play a full album track from Agnetha Faltskog's new album "My Colouring Book", a new entry at #12 (announced by you). Yet you play full tracks from George Michael and Scissor Sisters, albums already in the album chart. (Even those tracks you played were the singles already in the singles chart).
I know Agnetha is not Radio 1 material rather Radio 2, but you are claiming to be the best chart show in the world and the "first". So it is time you reflected the album chart correctly and play a track from new entries, regardless of whether they are "A" or "B" list on Radio 1.
Disappointed that your show is not fully comprehensive of what the record buying public is purchasing. And don't give me the line "time constraints did not allow us to play an album track from Agnetha", you could have dropped George Michael or Scissor Sisters.
A reply from you would be nice, justifying your play list on the album part of the show today.
Yours sincerely,
Diego Lopez,"
Thanks to ABBA fan Diego Lopez, UK
PPS: "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind" just announced for her second week in UK singles chart at #22. Outselling Britney at #26, Janet Jackson dropped to around 27 or so. So a peak of #11, not bad for 17 years out of the scene. Maybe that's a record for best comeback position for a single after a long period out of charts.
SUNDAY TIMES REVIEW - Posted at 12:37 AM
This is the rather favourable review from The Sunday Times THE MONTH MAY 04 CD (for computers):
"Here's how it could have been: Warners release the effervescent When You
Walk In The Room as a single, Radio 2 slaps it on the A list, and a
generation hails the magnificent return of Agnetha - the blonde in ABBA -
after the best part of two decades holed up in her mansion, doing a Greta
Garbo.
But that's not how it's going to be apparently, because the reclusive
Fältskog has already returned to her mansion, as wary of the spotlight as
ever, and this collection of her favourite 1960s pop tunes is therefore
destined to remain low-key.
Rather a shame, really, as although My Colouring Book is hardly a
substantial work, Fältskog's voice is still evocative, some of the songs
are crackers, and I rather suspect it could easily be another 20 years
before her next album."
Snippets of six songs can also be heard:
If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind
When You Walk In The Room
Sealed With A Kiss
Love Me With All Your Heart
Remember Me
Sometimes When I'm Dreaming
It also has a section entitled "If you like this, try these:" and features
the following albums:
Dusty Springfield, Dusty In Memphis
The Shangri-Las, Myrmidons of Melodrama
Julie London, The End Of The World/Nice Girls Don't Stay For Breakfast
Various Artists, Phil Spector Back To Mono (1958-1969)
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Paul Campbell, Edinburgh, UK and Trent Nickson, Sydney, Australia
DUTCH NEWSPAPER ARTICLE - Posted at 12:26 AM
Please keep in mind that although printed in Holland's biggest newspaper the article is written by Wilma Nanninga, editor of Privé, biggest gossip magazine in the Netherlands.
Abba's Agnetha about her surprising comeback: I'm singing away the misery.
Abba is totally hot, but from lead singer Agnetha we haven't heard for 16 years long. After the many drama's in her personal life, a new career for the blonde singer seemed further away then ever. That THIS woman has secretly been working on a comeback for 4 years is both spectacular as remarkable. On the eve of the release of her new CD Privé had a shocking meeting with the fragile Swede.
Agnetha: 'Sometimes you have to look back in the past to be able to get on with your life. The songs on my new album My Colouring Book are songs with a personal memory of my own youth. They are coming right from my heart, and that's why I wanted to sing them'.
With 360 million sold records and the musical Mamma Mia sold out everywhere Abba are an established part of the pop scene. And who says Abba of course thinks of Agnetha Fältskog. In the 70's and 80's, together with Abba colleagues Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson en Anni-Frid Reuss, she was one of the biggest stars in the world. Everywhere where Abba appeared mostly Agnetha made the fans faint. With her beautiful voice and her sexy naive appearance she was an example to many young girls and young boys lost their heads over her. Agnetha now lives on Helgö, a beautiful island just outside Stockholm. Far away from the rest of the world, she got rid of all glitter and glamour, so it seems if we meet her by accident on the parking place of the local supermarket, a day before the interview. A very special experience.
The Agnetha we meet is a completely different woman then the diva from old times. In the grey reality of a clouded Swedish day she looks like an ordinary housewife. She's 54 years old now. The recognisable blond hair is still there. Styled in a modern way. No other styling or makeup. Agnetha wears a simple cobalt blue coat, with a matching shawl. The shock comes with the near vacuous expression of her face. Her eyes are deep in her orbits and the wrinkles around her mouth show this woman is far from happy. We hardly recognise her. Agnetha is shocked when she sees we recognise her. Her eyes move from left to right, frightened. But she remains standing in a way we can look her right in the eyes. It's almost like she wants us to say, Yes, look at me, it's really me. She looks at us from top to toe. Over a minute long we look at the star's somewhat swollen face, and she looks at us. Agnetha looks like a cornered cat. With that difference that there is no one else present and Agnetha can leave the parking place if she wants to. It seems that deep from the inside she somewhat enjoys the attention.
What's the matter with Agnetha? Is she really the recluse she's made out to be for all those years? But a recluse, lives in total solitude, doesn't do her own shopping, especially when she's a millionaire. And a recluse certainly doesn't make a comeback with a new CD, like Agnetha.
Her ex-boyfriend Bruce Gaitsch tells us: ' Not many people recognise Agnetha when they see her in real life. On the one hand she doesn't want to be recognised. On the other hand she is furious when people don't recognise her. It's a very double sided attitude. The attitude of someone who hates attention, but cannot live without it. It's a vulnerable Agnetha who presents her new album. Commercially it's already a big success. Her first new single in 16 years. If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind has become a big hit in the UK in no time. But behind her success there is a lot of drama. When the interview finally takes place Agnetha tells us shy but openhearted: 'There were moments in the ABBA time, that my daughter Linda didn't recognise me when we came home from a tour. She was so little and had to get used to her mother and father all over again. That hurt tremendously.' On stage everything seemed okay, but behind the screens the domestic problems where a big sorrow for Agnetha. More often her husband Björn had to convince Agnetha to go on long promotion tours. When after many fights Björn and Agnetha's wedding falls apart, Abba doesn't split up as expected by many. But the last world tour is a big trauma for Agnetha. Agnetha's fragile personality, her tendency to phobic fears are severely tested in Australia by hysteric en pushy fans. During a near flying accident the shy star develops several phobias mainly fear of flying and fear of open spaces. Agnetha has crossed her own human boundaries too often and now has to pay the price. When in the beginning of the 80's Abba decide to take a break Agnetha is very relieved. A break that will eventually mean the end of the group. Agnetha starts a successful solo career. Her singles 'Wrap your arms around me' and 'The heat is on' are big hits. To promote these records she decides to no longer fly but travel by a luxury touring car. But destiny strikes again when after a performance in the UK she gets into a severe bus accident and she is swung out of the bus like a cannonball. >From that moment on the emotional damage is beyond repair.
Agnetha now: ' I really thought I wouldn't survive. You think about your life, your family, your responsibilities. For a moment I didn't know how to go on. The accident is a turning point in her career. She makes 2 more solo records, the last one in 1988, but from now on her family comes first. She no longer travels. After a one time performance in the UK her boyfriend at the time Bruce Gaitsch tells Agnetha hasn't slept for 3 nights, just because she had to say a few words on television. Again this is a turning point in her career. Now her attitude towards fans changes. She no longer answers fanmail. Agnetha wants to be alone and to be left alone.
But times change. In the book 'On Speaking Terms' that came out over a year ago Agnetha announces her comeback. A comeback that is now a fact with the release of her new CD. Suddenly enthusiastic Agnetha tells us she is producing a TV special that will be shown in Holland as well. "I will sing 6 or 7 songs from my new record. I worked on the album for 4 years. First with Michael B Tretow, Abba's original sound engineer. But when he became seriously ill, I completed the album with classic schooled arranger Anders Neglin. All songs on the record are memories from my youth. These are songs that - when I was young- inspired me to start singing en composing."
But even more then musical memories the songs on the CD My Colouring Book seem an escape to a time in which Agnetha lived without sorrow. Her divorce of doctor Tomas Sonnenfelt, her second husband, the tragic death of her mother who committed suicide, and the death of her father shortly afterwards were very difficult for Agnetha. And then we haven't even mentioned the misery of her on and off relationship with the Dutchman who stalked for quite some time. Agnetha seems to sing the misery away. Agnetha herself says: " I have always been more attracted to the sadder songs." Her voice sounds more personal and touching. The songs might be covers from hits form the 60's but seem more personal and significant then ever. On the potential hit ' Sometimes when I'm dreaming' she sings: " Though it may not be right, to give up the fight, I'm sailing away, now I'm on my own, alone". We hear a woman who only seems to be happy in her dreams. But Agnetha is not totally alone. Daughter Linda, her son in law and granddaughter Tilda also live on her estate. And son Christian can also be found on the estate very often. Agnetha: " Christian and Linda have convinced me to buy a very expensive stereo system. It might seem strange, but with that purchase my ambition to sing came back. Nowadays I enjoy a lot of different sorts of music. I seldom listen to Abba. For me the group is history. I want to aim at the future. Things I like to do and things I'm good at."
Time seems to have healed many wounds. But some things never change. Agnetha will not personally promote her most beautiful record from her career. She does not appear on an Abba reunion in London. Her manager lets us know that Abba is history for Agnetha. But reality becomes more and more clear when we meet Agnetha. Agnetha knows her limitations and can not handle such an event mentally. We cannot tempt Agnetha to pose for our cameras, the way she looks without a lot of makeup. What was the title of that song again? If I thought you'd ever change your mind? How appropriate, it does seem that Agnetha has changed her own mind to start singing again, but is not capable of accepting the consequences. How can someone that shy still seek attention? Maybe this CD is a turning point for Agnetha? On the new promotional pictures we see a radiant Agnetha, but nothing is further away from the truth. Agnetha makes a strong comeback with her CD, but in reality she is unrecognisably fragile and painfully vulnerable.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Monique Hoevens Tilburg, the Netherlands
April 25, 2004
GET YOUR OWN GOOSEBUMPS! Posted at 9:27 PM
The 45 second TV advert for My Colouring Book is now on Agnetha's official site - www.agnetha.se - in the 'Music' area under videos. I think it's a great advert and shows clips from several songs though I'm not sure if the clips match what's being sung with the exception of If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind and When You Walk In The Room.
Very nice to see and can't wait to see more!! Got goosebumbs and all when I saw this!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Randy Minten, all goosebumped up in Paris, France
AGNETHA - AN INTERVIEW OF SORTS - Posted at 2:47 AM
In todays Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet, there's a kind of interview with Agnetha. Unfortunately the interview/article isn't on the online version, but only in the printed version, which I have translated into English for you:
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I HAVE HAD A GOOD LIFE.
ABBA-Agnetha breaks the agelong silence with an answer to Ekstra Bladet.
I can look back on a good life and I still hope I can look forward on many good years too, the ABBA-singer Agnetha Fältskog says in an answer to Ekstra Bladet.
The blond Swede has become 54 years old and has the last couple of decades avoided contact with the press and media, while living a totally secluded life in her house on Ekerö outside Stockholm.
All requests about an interview in connection with her new album in 17 years, "My Colouring Book", which was released last Monday, has kindly been refused. In stead of has choosen journalists from all around the world been asked to send her questions by letter and among those hundreds of questions asked, she has choosen to answer 9 - four of the nine were asked by Ekstra Bladet.
Among the answers there aren't any which are connected with the ABBA period. Ekstra Bladet would for example have liked to know if she looked back on the years of success with joy and pleasure - if she still sees Frida, Benny and Björn and if she can understand the whole worlds continuously interest in the Swedish pop-phenomenon. These questions she unfortunately has choosen to ignore.
WANTED TO SING AGAIN
In return for that, she happily and willingly talks about her comeback-album, which has been "slaughtered" by several music critics - but still very fast has turned out to be a sales success.
One of Ekstra Bladet's questions was about what had motivated her to make this comeback-album with cover versions of mainly welknown songs from the 60's. To that she answers: I wanted to sing again and through the years I have got so many kind letters from fans all around the world telling me, that they wanted to hear my voice again. That was my motivation/incentive, besides it also was a nostalgic trip for me to go back to my youth with all those songs, which really meant so much to me.
Ekstra Bladet: How have you kept up your voice - do you sing in the bathroom like everyone else does?
Agnetha: Yes, sometimes I sing in the bathroom. But I haven't decidedly practised in this, can we call it, long silent break or period of mine. In fact I was a bit worried when we started on the recordings. Had something happened to my voice after the years gone? At first it was a bit hard, but pretty fast it came naturally, so it wasn't really a problem. In fact it sounds pretty good, I think.
NOT NERVOUS
Ekstra Bladet: Is it important for you, that the album becomes a success?
Agnetha: It isn't necessary if it will be a hit, but it would be nice if it sells well, though and people do like what one has made. It would be a lie to say something else.
Ekstra Bladet: Are you nervous about going public again?
Agnetha: Not at all. I try to do it my way and at a pace that I like. We have been in the studio over a long period, just so it wouldn't be stressful and I hope you can hear the relaxed atmosphere that has been during the progress.
Ekstra Bladet: You're now 54 years old. What do you think the future will bring you?
Agnetha: You never know that. Right now I'm so much into this album. If I feel for it, I maybe will record another album, but the way I feel now, then it's enough with this one. But let's see what happens.
By Allan Lykke
Translated into English thanks to ABBAMAILer Jan Bach, Copenhagen, Denmark
AGNETHA'S BEAUTIFUL SHAWL - Posted at 2:42 AM
A personal review in the second largest Danish newspaper in DK Politiken by well-known journalist Erik Jensen reflecting the fact that the blonde factor never was as important in Scandinavia as in the rest of the world -though we loved Agnetha well. Quite hard to translate though, contains lots of strange metaphors.
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Politiken April 23 2004
Agnetha's Beautiful Shawl
3/6
I might as well confess that my personal favourite in ABBA was the dark and the devil-may-care Frida who could snarl 'Rock Me' so the posters in my room transformed into magic carpets loaded with thrilling expectations of the future. And, oh, these women in strange clothes.
But of course ABBA would never have become a Scandinavian world succes without the opposite feeling. The gently absorbing melancholy and female sweetness lying in the mouth of Agnetha Fältskog as naturally as fresh bilberries on a cloudy summer day in a Swedish forest. The shy diva with the troubled life after the hectic pop years who suddenly has revived her career with this CD with her versions of some of the great songs in honour of romance.
I might as well confess that I really like parts of the CD. Excactly because of the bittersweet melancholy characteristic of the best interpretations like 'Sealed With A Kiss', 'Past, Present And future', 'I Can't Reach Your Heart' and 'Remember Me'. On the other hand I easily could have done without tired clichés like 'When You Walk In The Room', 'Fly Me To The Moon' and 'What Now My Love', to which the blonde sweet doesn't add anything. Passion and bravura don't make Agnetha any better. But simple, beautiful songs that she wraps around herself like a shawl against the cold and tristess of the world actually do. A shawl of pure silk warming us as well.
Erik Jensen
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Thanks to ABBA fan Nils, Copenhagen, Denmark
April 24, 2004
SOME LATEST UK CHART NEWS - Posted at 9:40 PM
Agnetha re-enters the Top 50 Airplay Chart this week. Two weeks ago she was at #40, then fell back to #60. This week she reaches a new high of #36, with an increase in audience reach up 51% to 17.6m. At the same time she enters the Radio 2 Top 10 airplay chart again, this week at #9. She is still B-listed.
Surprisingly, Agnetha's Almighty Mix doesn't feature in the Music Week dance charts at all, despite being commercially available. Perhaps the DJs were not serviced with the track in time. The five-track ABBA GOLD sampler (which was #1 two weeks ago on the Commercial Pop Top 30) continues to fall back, now at #15 from #8.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Paul Campbell, Edinburgh, UK
UPDATE ON DUTCH CHARTS - Posted at 8:24 PM
An update from the Netherlands about Agnetha and her positions in the Dutch charts:
- (Single) Mega top 50: #20 (from 24) on last Saturday (3 weeks) - (Single) Top 40 : first entry on #34
- (Album) Mega Album Top 100: first entry at #31 - (Single) Pepsi chart: from #10 to #11 (last Friday) (3 weeks)
- (Album) Pepsi chart album top 40: first entry at #20!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Gé Teunissen, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
AGNETHA & THE YOUNGER GENERATION - Posted at 8:22 PM
My daughter, who will be 15 in a couple of weeks, was out shopping with her (current!) boyfriend.
In Virgin Megastore she stopped at the display full of Agnetha albums, seeing her looking, the b/f enquired "Who the f*ck is Aggneeetha Faltscog".
"Agnetha Fältskog", she corrected him, "is one quarter of ABBA, the blonde one. She has a gorgeous voice and I already heard the single before it was released."
"How do you know all this stuff - you can't like it surely?"
"I adore ABBA and my Dad is a huge fan. He says the Agnetha album is stunning, although it might not be our taste."
"Load of crap more like. Fancy having a Dad into ABBA ".
"Well, my Dad was in the audience at one of the world's biggest selling musical's 5th anniversary performance last week. He was there as 3/4 of ABBA walked in."
"So what, meaningless crap."
"Selling more than 10,000 records a day world-wide even now - that's crap? That's more records in a week than most of your favourite bands sell in the time they're together. Get real! Besides, Dad says Frida is stunning and divine. That's enough for me."
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Kevin Fletcher, Birmingham, UK
LINKS TO SWEDISH AGNETHA REVIEWS - Posted at 8:11 PM
Some reviews in Swedish press lately:
http://www.halsingekuriren.se/20040422/artiklar/K1_20040422_023_1_6.htm
TT SPEKTRA: 2/5
http://www.arbetarbladet.se/article.php?id=231715&avdelning_1=0&avdelning_2=0
Arbetarbladet
http://www.folkbladet.nu/index.asp?vf=1&x=24402
Västerbottens folkblad: 2/5
http://www.ystadsallehanda.se/Article.jsp?article=50539
Ystads Allehanda: 3/5
http://w1.sydsvenskan.se//Article.jsp?article=10081528
Sydsvenska dagbladet: 2/5
http://www2.unt.se/avd/1,2883,MC=5-AV_ID=315376,00.html?from=recenboxUppsala Nya Tidning. And it gives the album a 4 out of 5 "birds".
Aftonbladet has reviewed it in their "PULS"-attach and it gets 2/5
http://www.norran.se/sektion_c.php?id=350131&avdelning_1=121&avdelning_2=152
Norran gives it 3/5.
http://www.ekuriren.se/ekuriren/artikel_skiv_recension.php?id=250740&avdelning_1=109&avdelning_2=132
Eskilstunakuriren: (No grade)
http://www.inorr.se/pt/index.php?artikel=88366
Piteåtidningen 2/5
http://www.ltz.se/artikel_standard.php?id=156847&avdelning_1=124&avdelning_2=161
Länstidningen i Östersund: 3/5
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Robin Andersson, Stockholm, Sweden
MIDWEEK MADNESS! - Posted at 7:50 PM
Agnetha's mid week UK chart position for the album is...No 7!
Probably won't maintain that for the end of week chart but anyway...Bloody Hell!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Richard Simcock, Sydney, Australia
AGNETHA GOES YELLOW Posted at 7:17 PM
Encouraged by the success of Agnetha's single in the UK with the fabulous Almighty Mix, Warner will now release a "maxi CD single" of If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind across Europe on April 28, 2004.
The cover has been tinted yellow for this release which includes all 4 mixes of the song. CD-ON has begun to accept pre-orders for the single.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Robin Andersson, Stockholm, Sweden
AGNETHA TV SPECIAL FOR DENMARK Posted at 7:11 PM
Agnetha's promotional TV special for "My Colouring Book" will feature on Finnish television on May 13 at 7.05pm.
Also in Finland, the magazine "Finna" this week has published a three page story on Agnetha.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Dominic "Ice" Wallis, UK
SOME AGNETHA REVIEWS - Posted at 7:42 AM
A few Agnetha reviews :
TISCALI :
" Agnetha Faltskog- 'My Colouring Book' album review
Release date: April 19th 2004
Four years ago Agnetha Faltskog (the blonde one from Abba) started to research the music of the sixties.
She delved into books, checked charts and began collecting large quantities of rare records. The eventual results of this meticulous undertaking became the central focus on 'My Colouring Book'.
The album was recorded in Stockholm's legendary Atlantis Studios (where Abba first recorded thirty years ago) and features thirteen tracks of mesmerising pop brilliance.
'When You Walk In The Room' (written by Jackie de Shannon) and 'Sometimes When I'm Dreaming' (written by Mike Batt) are obvious highlights, but they are joined by a host of other classic gems.
Features the single 'If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind'
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"Agnetha Faltskog - 'If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind' review
Single release date: 12th April 2004
The 'blonde one' from Euro-pop behemoths Abba hasn't released any English language recordings in over eight years. Her welcome return with 'If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind' is taken from her forthcoming 'My Colouring Book' album heralding a true renaissance for the "voice of Abba".
Originally recorded in 1969 by Cilla Black, Faltskog's version is a marvellous amalgamation of epic balladry and sixties production, sounding like a great lost Carpenters' track.
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THE GUARDIAN :
Agnetha Faltskog, My Colouring Book
(WEA)
Caroline Sullivan
Friday April 16, 2004
The Guardian
The only former member of Abba to have acquired a stalker - resulting in the cancellation of promotion for her first album in 15 years - Agnetha Faltskog has a vulnerability that gets under the skin of a song. She may be cheating a trifle by including no original material on this collection of 1960s covers, but if anyone can do justice to the likes of Sealed with a Kiss, it's her. The soaring sentimen-tality evokes Cilla Black and Sandie Shaw in their mini-skirted pomp, and I don't say that lightly.
Faltskog has a Prince-like disdain for fashion, and My Colouring Book feels as if pop stopped in 1964, before MOR became a term of abuse. Strings are layered like there's no tomorrow and a lone trumpet parps mistily, to which Faltskog's vocals are a tremulous counterpoint. A mix of standards (Fly Me
to the Moon, The End of the World) and obscurities (If I Thought You'd Ever Change your Mind, a minor Cilla hit), this album offers proof that Abba's sense of melodrama wasn't entirely the work of the bearded one.
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A Dutch Review :
by Hanneke Van Der Berg
" How beautiful nostalgia can be !!!!! Agnetha releases her first solo album in 17 years and offers us a caleidoscope of gorgeous memories and scenes from the past. Listening to her still great voice makes you not only relive some of the ABBA magic but also some of the glorious sixties. Songs like When You Walk ....,Sealed with a Kiss,etc ... are such well-known tracks that not many would be able to make you forget the original versions, but Agnetha manages to do it without any problem. And her accent makes it all even a bit more special,so that the whole album is turned into something rather irresistible "
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Thanks to ABBAMAILer Jurgen Parys, Bremen, Germany
April 23, 2004
POLISH FANS OUT FOR MY BLOOD! - Posted at 11:28 PM
The Polish ABBA fans are after me!
I have been ordered to tell you that Agnetha's album, My Colouring Book, was available in shops on Friday April 16th - some 3 days before its official release date.
The Polish fans are v.v. impressed with this and say gone are the days when living in Poland meant having to wait months or years for the release of an album.
They love Aggie's album and want you to know many of them got it before you did!
So there!
Graeme Read
ABBAMAIL Administration
AGNETHA SONGWRITER V.V.HAPPY - Posted at 11:10 PM
This fab email just came in from Barbara Cameron (wife of John Cameron, the composer of IF I THOUGHT YOU'D EVER CHANGE YOUR MIND) in response to a comment I put on the Latest News Page about it being pretty damn good that Agnetha's single reached #11 on the UK charts:
"Hi Graeme - wondered where you'd got to. Then realised you were probably en route (as they say). Don't envy you the jet-lag. You beat me to it - just wanted to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU for your
magnificent campaign. We're amazed at the no 11 slot - I think this is an incredible achievement by Agnetha. Well... what more can I say. John was talking to Julie Felix on the 'phone last night - she was, in
fact, the first person to sing If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind (originally titled 'I Will Bring You Flowers) on her TV show she used to have here in the UK in the 60's. She was very excited and rushed off to look at the video of Agnetha on Sky's Magic channel (which seemed to be being aired every few minutes)! Ho, Hum. Hope you had a fab time in London and hope you recover soon.
Barbara"
And Graeme says: thanks for the great feedback Barbara. Hope those royalty cheques start rolling in soon ;-) ;-p
Graeme Read
ABBAMAIL Administration
EVEN THE DUTCH REGIONALS LOVE HER! Posted at 11:07 PM
Agnetha`s new single is a big hit in the regional Rijnmond Top 30 in the Netherlands:
She's at number 3!
http://217.149.193.67/rijnmond30.html
Thanks to ABBA fan Ed Aldus, The Netherlands
AGNETHA ON SKY MAGIC MUSIC CHANNEL - Posted at 11:03 PM
First sighting today (April 16th) of the video for "If I thought you'd ever change your mind" on Sky's Magic Music Channel (452) -- The video will now be on rotation play for at least a week and when it charts or if viewers phone in to request it then maybe for longer.
Agnetha looks great in the video and let's hope it (and the single's) success will give her the confidence to emerge further out of the shadows.
Thanks to ABBA fan Jeremy Scholes, Manchester, UK
AGNETHA CLIPS ON DUTCH SITE Posted at 10:06 PM
Just watched a short clips for the videos for "When You Walk In The Room" and "Sealed With A Kiss at:
www.cafezizo.nl.
Click English, then "videos" and there's a Dutch language show, showing short clips to the album TV advert, the full video to "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind", a studio video of "Wrap Your Arms
Around Me", Fly Like An Eagle", "I Stand Alone", "short clips of ABBA and solo work, "Mamma Mia", "Waterloo", then the show goes off into other areas of pop and videos..70's Spacer by Sheila B Devotion, some weird drag acts...(If you understand Dutch then its great ;-p )
Thanks to ABBA fan Diego Lopez, St. Albans, UK
AGNETHA IN DANISH CHARTS - Posted at 10:04 PM
Agnetha entered the danish single charts a Top 20, at number 15. This is a local sensation. After all, it's mainly very young people who buy CD-singles, and they ususally go for more comtemporary sound.
The Danish television has a lot of spots about the new album, so it will probably also make the top 20. Exciting to see her danish chart positions, because Denmark was one of the countries where she was most succesful in the 80's. For example: (Album: Wrap your arms around me, was the third highest selling album in Denmark in 1983, making number one for six weeks.)
Thanks to ABBA fan Carsten Michael Laursen, Viborg, Denmark
AGNETHA #2 IN SWEDEN - Posted at 9:22 PM
The News page on www.agnetha.se confirms that IF I THOUGHT YOU'D EVER CHANGE YOUR MIND has debuted at #2 on the Swedish chart. Wow!
The #1 spot is still Lena Ph's "Det gör ont".
Thanks to Paul Burt, Brussels, Belgium
AGGIE'S FAVOURITE SUPERMARKET? - Posted at 8:13 PM
Agnetha's new album My Colourng Book was advertised at 7.20am today on Granada TV by
Tesco (the UK supermarket chain). It was a full television commercial for Agnetha and looked sensational.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer David Allison, Skelmersdale, UK
DANISH AGNETHA REVIEW Posted at 7:47 AM
Here is a rough translation:
Pop Magic
At first I listened absent-mindedly in the kitchen while I was peeling the potatoes. Then Agnetha sang for me while I was cleaning the office. Later the ABBA girl slipped into my car while I picked up the children. Finally I just had to sit down and get sentimental with my ear phones on. And now I can’t let go of Agnetha Fältskog’s wonderful solo album ”My Colouring Book” her first in 17 years.
At first it was maybe only the voice imagine having it back after almost 2 decades. But then each and every one of the 13 songs opened up as the exotic pop flowers they really are.
Actually there’s nothing new on Agnetha’s album and thank God for that. I wouldn’t want last year’s pop idol chasing today’s hit list sound. No, in stead the blond Swedish recluse has chosen to focus on songs from the past the songs that initially inspired her to dream big music dreams. And it has resulted in sheer pop magic.
Pictures from the soul
Most colleagues that follow that well-known concept end up with CD’s that just sound like a stifled echo from the good old days. But Agnetha Fältskog possesses after all these years first in the limelight of the entire World and then in complete silence the unknown factor X that turns songs like ”A Fool Am I”, The End Of The World” and ”What Now My Love” into big fascinating Technicolor panorama pictures of the human soul.
Yes, it sounds bombastic. And luckily it is. Actually I can’t remember an album of evergreens that is more successful since Linda Ronstadt’s dream album ”Winter Light” (buy it!)
As the former Lidna Ronstadt and the late Karen Carpenter Agnetha’s voice possesses the rare combination of clarity, sweetness and agony. She is not afraid to meet the pain and hold the demons tightly on optimally produced versions of ”Remember Me” and ”My Colouring Book”. And whatever Agnetha may have been doing for the last 17 years it has been good for the ABBA girl’s soul and singing heart. And the comeback may be the most welcome all year.
You see, this is an album that will not leave my favourite list soon
5 stars out of 6.
Thanks to ABBAMAIler Filip Jensen, Copenhagen, Denmark
WHEN YOU WALK IN THE ROOM PREMIERE - Posted at 7:43 AM
Yesterday I had the luck to visit the official world premiere of the video to the next single from Agnetha's album. The song is "When you walk in the room" and the video is done in the same way as the "If I thought you'd ever change your mind"-one, as a studio-performance in "black and white" but with a yellow tint instead of pink. And in the video I could spot my namesake Linda Ulvaeus several time singing
backing vocals. The wideo was shown three times or something like that during the evening. And the "If I thought you'd ever change your mind"-video wa alsho shonw as well as some older Agnetha-material and
some ABBA-stuff too. (I managed to see two seconds of Frida between the beer drinking and talking)
The premiere took place at the pub Torget in Gamla Stan and I went there together with the Stockholm visitor Ask Ian and my friends Anders and Martin. Torget is one of those unpretentious places that I've been passing by several times without really noticing (it lies next door to the more famous restaurant Trattoria Romana, favourite of former prime minister Carl Bildt among others) and it's slightly more than a hole in the wall with a revolving chandelier as a cool replacement for a mirror ball.
We got to hear the complete " My colouring book" several times, the Almighty remix of "If I thought you'd ever change your mind" and a lot of other Agnetha-songs and ABBA-songs. For instance "The Heat is on",
"Zigenarvän", "Tack för en underbar dag", "Doktorn", "SOS" in Swedish, "Super Trouper", "The day before you came", "Super Trouper", "Mama Mia", "Ring Ring", "The winner takes it all", "Under attack" et cetera. A
great night, although a little bit smoky for me who managed to bring a cold home from Roosendaal together with the Agnetha-Album, the Bubi-book and all the other stuff.
And there were also some celeb-spotting. During the evening the singer Eva Dahlgren showed up together with wife Efva Attling + some friends. Eva had lost a few kilos, otherwise she looked like she has been doing the last 15 years.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Linda Granqvist, Stockholm, SWEDEN
AGNETHA SvD REVIEW - Posted at 7:40 AM
Agnetha Fältskog remembers her sixties
Review in Svenska Dagbladet by Dan Backman
Agnetha Fältskog : My colouring book
Four dots out of six
Agnetha Fältskog takes two steps back to land in her first career as a singer with more Swedish list oriented material.
Calm favourites. That's a way of summing the return of Agnetha Fältskog. The return to the musical scene or whatever she had in mind.
ABBA-Agnetha looks back to her teenager's early sixties in Jönköping and recalls a time with vinyl collections, pillows with pink flowers and yearning and longing. The record company calls it a "research project" but it's nothing but a loving but hardly original deep diving into popular music. Calm ballads by white artists, who shaped young Fältskog at home in her room. A nostalgic journey build upon same raisons-d-etre as all other personal favourites- album. Check for instance the superb album "At last" by Cyndi Lauper, which was released this autumn. And there are many more.
Regarding the ABBA-stars famous shyness and the fact that it has been 17 years since the last album "I stand alone" was released, it is of course cruel to release an album with covers. I don't doubt the ncereness in the project, but an album with favourite songs performed in versions close to the originals is a bet on a safe horse. Those who look for deconstructions or updates have nothing to find here.
Instead of venture out in the unknown and challenge for both herself and her audience (something we should be thankful she avoids) Agnetha takes two steps back, past both ABBA and the solo-albums that followed ABBA and lands in her first career as a singer with a more Swedish list oriented material. This personal touch turns "My colouring book" into an almost unassailable album. It's certainly slightly boring in places but in it's best moments it is touching in it's unpretentious naiveté and melancholia.
The strength with My colouring book is it's typical 60s sound. With one exception this sound is there in both the singing and instrumentation and arrangements. On top of this Agnetha Fältskog sings ith a surprising security and a straightforward directness which lies in the line with the characteristics of the songs.
But unfortunately everything is not working smoothly. It is like a calming blanket has been laid over both arrangements and performance. One can guess that the ambition has been to create a feeling of closeness and with a surrealistic under stream. That is something the singer and her co-producers Angers Neglin and Dan Strömqvist have been able to form in the subliminal title track. But otherwise it results in
a pointless minimalistic expression.
The best parts are the tracks where the 60:ies shines through the most and where Agnetha Fältskog is allowed to express herself the most. "If I thought you'd ever change your mind", "Love me with all your heart", "A fool am I", "The end of the world" and "Remember me" are presented as fluffy cakes at yellow transistor-powered turntables. The interpretations could have been sweeter but they are still working. The
performed songs are sky high above most of the contemporary, computer-generated songs, and the interpretations are done with honour.
Other things are not that good. "Fly me to the moon" is rendered as a coctail-bossanova and could have become real brilliant. Unfortunately it is presented with a non-sensual singing and a sloppy low tempo which almost kills the fine melody before the song reaches it's end.
The following song "Past, present and future" is one of the most bizarre part of the album. It's half-serious lyrics and a half-serious melody could have ended up in heaven but suffers from restrained
instrumentation and over-worked vocals and it just becomes too strange. Not to mention that Agnetha Fältskog's English is in level with a high school student.
The finishing "What now my love" has been given a form which reminds of U2 and is the albums only try at an updated soundscape. Luckily enough Bono don't appear as a duet partner. That would have been a nightmare. And the song develops into something similar to a updated Righteous-Brother-sound. Is that a hint that the sequel is going to be more contemporary?
By Dan Backman / To English by ABBAMAILer Linda Granqvist, Stockholm, Sweden
AGNETHA REVIEWED IN DN Posted at 7:29 AM
In today's Dagens Nyheter there's a review of Agnetha's "My Colouring Book".
Here's my translation:
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SOS from the girl's room
Abba made Agnetha Fältskog from Jönköping to one of the world's most famous singers. Now, after 17 years of silence, she makes a comeback. Martin Nyström has listened to a voice that still has a trembling blackness.
Agnetha Fältskog now makes a comeback after many years of silence. With a bunch of songs that originate from her own teenage years. But it's not a usual cover album. It's rather a strange reconstruction of a music and a time on the other side of the threshold, which seem to be captured in the
girl's room's chaste dread. In a way as stubbornly bizarre as John Lennon's unreal and drug-confused nostalgic "Rock'n'roll".
But on "My colouring book" an immaculate past prevails with references to artists such as Petula Clark, Brian Hyland, Jackie Shannon and Fältskog's first big influence - the just as erotically cool as sentimentally
overheated Connie Francis. Not surprisingly, the album also opens from a hiding place: in Dusty Springfield's title song, where the room which "I sleep in and walk in, and weep in, and hide in" is a room that "nobody sees" and the colour of it is "lonely". It's a beginning of a sequence of songs which all, more or less, are about being alone, abandoned and misunderstood. And which ends with Fältskog taking on the classic "What now my love" - with it's lines about being numb and unreal, without goal, heart or soul.
But her voice is still amazingly intact. As glowingly restrained on the height and the trembling blackness in the depth which has characterized everything from the fumbling excuses on her first Svensktoppen hits to the most intense settlements during the Abba-era. Most of all I think of the tremendous singing effort on "The Winner Takes It All" where she strongly expressed her reluctance being controlled by a game. And the first phrase is: "I don't want to talk". I don't want to talk. It's funny to read the decades through Agnetha Fältskog's music: lonely and apologetic during the revolts' 1968 and aggressively genuineness defending during the postmodern 80s.
Why a new album? Well, in her autobiography "Som jag är" from 1996, Fältskog hints that she's not at all satisfied with the solo albums she made after Abba. The collaborations with distinguished gentlemen such as Mike Chapman, Eric Stewart, Peter Cetera, Tomas Ledin and Ola Håkansson today sounds like any other anonymous 80s pop and lacks the earlier so seducing balance between cool restraint and glowing intensity (which made some non-Swedes sometimes associate the Abba sound with Ingmar Bergman!).
With "My Colouring Book" the anonymity will be broken. Here it's mostly about songs that have "meant". But the problem with anonymity remains and you listen mostly frustrated with what can't be heard, what doesn't want to come out. As if the songs are a series of SOS that can't break the seal. At times it's also ghostly lacking energy - as in "Fly me to the moon", "A fool am I" and "I can't reach your heart". Here, surrounded by the abundant arrangements and sound images, Fältskog sounds like she's a stranger in the
world's most expensive karaoke show. The feeling is completed on the last three tracks, in "The end of the world", "Remember me" and "What now my love", which sound like a gradual disappearance.
The exception is Art Garfunkel's "Sometimes when I'm dreaming", which Fältskog performs with a spectacular point to a simple accompany by piano and strings. The same song: "Nobody knows who I am", but it doesn't end there, enclosed in a cocoon, instead it's stretched out. It doesn't have to be more difficult than that, there are so many of us out here who also are grasping for what's real.
By Martin Nyström
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Thanks to ABBAMAILer Claes Davidsson, Orlando, Florida, USA
OTHER UK CHARTS - AGNETHA - Posted at 7:20 AM
Agnetha made it to Number 10 as a new entry in the independent (ITV) singles chart.
In Wales Agnetha made it to Number 15 based on Welsh sales (information from B.B.C. Cymru / Wales)
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Gareth Thomas, Llangynwyd, Cymru, UK
AFTONBLADET ON AGNETHA'S LAUNCH PARTY Posted at 7:16 AM
Here's a translation of the article in Aftonbladet about Agnetha's launch party:
Agnetha's secret party last night
Had a party for celebrities - celebrated at the hotspot
Last night Agnetha Fältskog celebrated her new album with a secret release party at Berns in Stockholm.
The ABBA-stars closest friends, record company people and a number of celebrities attended the party.
The party began at 7.30 PM last night with a Thai-inspired buffet.
Agnetha Fältskog, who was escorted by two bodyguards, was casually dressed in jeans, brown top and suede boots.
During the opening of the party, songs from the shy singer's new album "My Colouring Book" were played.
-She was really relaxed. Even though she was the big star of the evening, she was able to relax, says one person who attended the party.
"Radiant"
- Agnetha was radiant. She laughed and greeted all the guests who approached her.
Half of the 150 guests had been personally invited by Agnetha Fältskog.
Some of the famous faces in the crowd were Fredrik Lindström, Per Sinding-Larsen, Mats Ronander, Janne Schaffer, Markoolio, Lotta Bromé and Fredrik Kempe.
Mauro Scocco, who also attended, told Aftonbladet last night:
- It was a "chill out" event. But it was very nice.
Her daughter Linda Ulvaeus, who sings back up on a couple of songs on the album, was also there to celebrate with her mum.
The record company Warner Music's managing director Jonas Siljemark handed out gold- and platinum records to Agnetha and her producers.
Agnetha gave a short speech in which she thanked for all the help she had received from those she had worked with.
"Continued to mingle"
Around 10.30 PM the star left the party for a while to visit Bern's largest suite which had been reserved by the record company.
-When she came back she continued to mingle with the guests. Among other things, she sat down at a table and talked with Mats Ronander, one person at the party says.
The last guests left the party around 2 AM last night. Agnetha had already left to go home a couple of hours earlier.
By Daniel Nyhlén
Thanks to ABBAMAILers Robin Andersson Stockholm, Sweden and Claes Davidsson, Orlando, USA
AGNETHA'S LAUNCH PARTY Posted at 7:11 AM
From Expressen about Agnetha's CD launch party
Agnetha's secret party last night
Yesterday the shy star left her home on Ekerö - and arranged a big secret release party in central Stockholm.
Late last night Agnetha Fältskog continued partying with her friends.
- She was really happy, one of the guests says to Expressen.
The secrecy around the former Abba-star's release party was large. No journalists were invited - Agnetha Fältskog had explained that she wanted to celebrate her comeback with a private party where about a hundred near and dear ones were invited. Surrounded by guards, the world famous star mingled among her guests and chatted throughout the evening.
Stood on stage
It's the first time in a long time that the artist has appeared so publicly. After having chosen to lock herself up in her home on Ekerö, she has appeared only a few times publicly. Last night she stood on stage at Berns at the same time as pictures from her coming documentary were shown on video screens on the premises. When she shortly thereafter received a gold and platinum record for her new album "My colouring book" - the guests cheered.
From the stage, the star explained how happy she is that her album has already become such a success. But that she hasn't made it herself - she thanked the people who had helped her.
Party until almost 2 AM
The last guests didn't leave the party until 1.45 AM. Mats Ronander and Lotta Bromé were two of the last guests.
But last of all, a dressed up Agnetha, wearing a black fashionable short mini-skirt with a flounce, and her daughter Linda left through a rear entrance surrounded by several guards.
Flowers, gold records and gifts were put in the car before they went home.
One person who was invited to the party talked with Agnetha Fältskog shortly afterwards.
Then she explained the timing of her comeback.
- I love to sing. These are my favourite songs and my babies that I have now recorded, she said.
Mingled
Janne Schaffer - who has worked with Agnetha earlier - said as he left the party last night:
- Agnetha was very happy. I was there during the Abba-years, so this was a lot of fun.
Marko "Markoolio" Lehtosalo:
- She mingled and talked with everybody. She gave me a hug, he said.
By Susan Ritzén and Tomas Kvarnkullen
------------
Thanks to ABBAMAILers Robin Andersson, Stockholm, Sweden and Claes Davidsson, Orlando, Florida, USA
CATALOGUE NUMBERS FOR AGNETHA SINGLES - Posted at 7:06 AM
The following information is aimed at those who are interested in the different catalogue numbers so they know they order the right version.
* Dutch release (the sleeve says manufactured in the EU) red cardboard sleeve record company & catalogue number: WEA 5050467-1651-5-1 Tracks:
1. If I Thought...... 03.13
2. If I Thought...... (Blue Remix) 02.55
* UK release (the insert says manufactured in the EU) small jewel case with small sticker saying "CD1 includes Blue Mix" the insert is light blue record company & catalogue number: WEA 375CD1 5046716512
Tracks:
1. If I Thought...... 03.13
2. If I Thought...... (Blue Mix) 02.55 <---- bit different name for the same remix
* UK release (the insert says manufactured in the EU) small jewel case with small sticker saying "CD2 includes Almighty Mixes" the insert is red record company & catalogue number: WEA 375CD2 5046733592
Tracks:
1. If I Thought...... 03.13
2. If I Thought...... (Almighty Mix) 07.09
3. If I Thought...... (Almighty Dub) 07.10
All track titles and playing times are taken from the cd cover / inserts.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Paul Carter for bringing copies of the UK single for those interested and attending the ABBF Day.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Walter Veldman, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
BBC ONLINE REVIEW OF AGNETHA ALBUM Posted at 6:58 AM
Review: Agnetha Faltskog's solo album
By Michael Osborn
BBC News Online entertainment staff
Thirty years since Abba's memorable Eurovision victory, former group member Agnetha Faltskog has returned to the musical spotlight with a solo album.
Blonde vocalist Faltskog was a vital part of the Swedish quartet Abba, who scored a string of memorable global hits. The music ended for the group in 1982.
The enigmatic Faltskog had a brief, less successful spell as a solo artist but then fell silent for 17 years.
This 2004 comeback with My Colouring Book puts further distance between Faltskog and her Abba past, but will none the less be devoured by fans.
The 53-year-old singer's long-awaited revival is a personal tribute project to her past musical influences.
Old-fashioned
It is a recreation of existing songs from the likes of Cilla Black, Brian Hyland and Frank Sinatra.
The lack of new material means Faltskog retains her mysterious, elusive air after years of seclusion.
The single If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind is a dramatic, delicately-wrought song that reflects the album's old-fashioned sense of song recording.
The intriguing Faltskog lays down her love of 60s musical melodrama with A Fool Am I - an orchestrally embellished old-style pop anthem.
The mood lightens with Love Me With All Your Heart and the Motown barnstormer When You Walk In The Room.
Faltskog's interpretation of Fly Me To The Moon is a flighty piece of bossa nova cabaret - and perhaps a cover too far.
Her vocal tones are at their richest on heartfelt ballad Sometimes When I'm Dreaming, along with lyrics which she could be singing from the heart.
The one-time Abba star has come up with a very safe musical return, which is destined for the more mature musical palate. It is a well-produced record, but is staunchly old school and sounds far less innovative than Abba did in their day.
Fans of the band will find little reference to that gilded era, except the odd shade of high drama with a nod to The Winner Takes It All.
After shunning the limelight for so many years, this heavily masked return is a failed opportunity for the once loved star to recapture our hearts.
My Colouring Book is on sale in the UK from 19 April.
--
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Sarah Marchant, Kent, UK
UK CHART COMMENTARY BY JAMES MASTERSON 19/04/04 Posted at 6:55 AM
"So what of the second Holy Crap moment? Well that would be this one, the quite sensational chart debut of a brand new solo single from a reclusive star who just happens to be one quarter of one of the most successful pop acts ever. In spite of their huge success as a unit, as solo stars the members of Abba never really set the charts on fire. Benny and Bjorn stayed together as songwriters, most famously penning the musical Chess. The two girls Anni-Frid and Agnetha both signed as solo stars with indifferent success. In this country it was Agnetha who had the most chart success, charting three singles in 1983, the biggest of which being 'The Heat Is On' which made Number 35. Her last contribution to the music business was a 1988 solo album entitled 'I Stand Alone' since when she has pretty much done exactly that, living a reclusive lifestyle back in Scandinavia. She laid low throughout all the 90s Abba revivals, even snubbing the launch of the musical 'Mamma Mia'. Nonetheless last year rumours began circulating that she had demoed some new tracks and sure enough last month WEA records announced they had signed the star, produced new publicity photos and promised her availability for interviews. Then something went wrong. The stalking problems that were partly a cause of her reclusive nature reared their head again and Agnetha pulled out of all promotion of her new album. Still, the release is going ahead and with it the single 'If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind'. Like all the other tracks on the album this is a cover of an old 60s song, popularised by Cilla Black who took it to Number 20 in late 1969. As a 2004 single it is something of an oddity but the selling point is clearly the voice of Agnetha Faltskog, sounding as fresh and clear as it did back in the 1970s. So there we have it. More than 20 years after they finally called it a day, a member of Abba finally has their biggest ever solo hit single. Holy Crap indeed."
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Michael Kyriagis, London, UK
UK TV ADVERTISEMENT - Posted at 6:42 AM
Have just seen the 'first' showing of an advert for Agnetha's Colouring Book CD in the UK - midway between the two Coronation Street episodes - couldn't have been better placed for a maximum viewing audience.
The advert showed clips of the current single, Walk in the Room and Only when You're Dreaming.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Martin Thompson, Rushden, Northants, UK
THE OBSERVER (UK) AGNETHA REVIEW - Posted at 6:40 AM
"Agnetha Faltskog: My Colouring Book (WEA)
Kitty Empire
The Observer:
What could have moved the former Abba star to end a silence of 17 years? Mamma Mia! and the thirtieth anniversary of 'Waterloo' winning Eurovision shouldn't really cut any ice with the notorious recluse. Whatever, it's good to have her back: time hasn't diminished her perfect voice. Faltskog can still infuse lines such as 'what use is the sunshine if I'm crying?' with unutterable pathos. It helps, too, that she's called on an orchestra and a set list from the Sixties to reintroduce herself. The well-executed nostalgia of the Shangri-La's 'Past, Present and Future' suits her better then any misguided attempt to do contemporary pop. My Colouring Book isn't flawless - from the title on, it can't escape a pall of cheesiness. One track - a version of 'What Now My Love' - has been bizarrely done in the style of U2. But not even the over-egged productions can blight Faltskog's charms."
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Kaarin Goodburn, UK
TIMES ON LINE AGNETHA REVIEW Posted at 6:38 AM
THE TITLE of the latest single to be taken from this album, If I Thought You 'd Ever Change Your Mind, must have a hollow ring to it for the executives at WEA, who set up a classy promotional spree for Faltskog only to see the notoriously reclusive former Abba singer take fright and head back into her secluded mansion to resume her existence as the Greta Garbo of easy listening. In Faltskog's absence, My Colouring Book will, presumably, be something of a low-key release, which is a shame because her voice is still an impressive pop instrument, and there are some great songs among these 1960s covers. Best of all is When You Walk in the Room, which deserves to be a single, even if WEA will have to be a bit imaginative with the video. Two stars.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Sara Russell, Sandhurst, UK
NETHERLANDS/POLAND NEWS - Posted at 6:34 AM
At a local Media Markt store in Rotterdam, Agnetha's CD was fifth in the sales - NOT BAD!
Agnetha's album hit the shops in Poland last Monday - so no delays in my country, which is a very nice surprise!
In the Polish radio chart, If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind is climbing slowly, but steadily, last Friday up 8 places to #40;
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Gabriel Zubowski, Poland
MORE REVIEWS FROM UK PRESS - Posted at 6:28 AM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1192556,00.html
4 out of 5 stars
Caroline Sullivan
The Guardian - Friday 16 April 2005
The only former member of Abba to have acquired a stalker - resulting in the cancellation of promotion for her first album in 15 years - Agnetha Faltskog has a vulnerability that gets under the skin of a song. She may be cheating a trifle by including no original material on this collection of 1960s covers, but if anyone can do justice to the likes of Sealed with a Kiss, it's her. The soaring sentimen-tality evokes Cilla Black and Sandie Shaw in their mini-skirted pomp, and I don't say that lightly.
Faltskog has a Prince-like disdain for fashion, and My Colouring Book feels as if pop stopped in 1964, before MOR became a term of abuse. Strings are layered like there's no tomorrow and a lone trumpet parps mistily, to which Faltskog's vocals are a tremulous counterpoint. A mix of standards (Fly Me to the Moon, The End of the World) and obscurities (If I Thought You'd Ever Change your Mind, a minor Cilla hit), this album offers proof that Abba's sense of melodrama wasn't entirely the work of the bearded one.
* * *
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/story.jsp?story=511748
Here's a dreadful review from The Independet - Saturday 16 April 2004
by Andy Gill
"Crayons ready?" Faltskog enquires at the start of this solo collection. "Very well, begin to colour me." Alas, my palette has no pigment pastel enough to accommodate the treacly sensibilities behind My Colouring Book, as lacklustre and uninspired an album as I've heard this year. Even the best tracks are never more than competent but characterless; while the worst, for which there are too many possible contenders, border on the emetic. Perhaps it's the single, "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind", whose sickly imagery is matched by equally sickly orchestration; or maybe "Love Me With All Your Heart", with its glutinous passage in Italian? No, on reflection I think it has to be "A Fool Am I", in which Agnetha recites earnest romantic tosh over the Moonlight Sonata, like something out of a bad French movie.
The album reeks of lazy opportunism: the choice of covers is anodyne, the productions enervating, and Agnetha's interpretations uninvolving. "Fly Me to the Moon", for instance, is not the song we want to hear from her, and, frankly, she's not the singer we'd choose if we wanted to hear that song; but the most glaring offence is perpetrated against "The End of the World", where she dispels the very despair that makes the song so affecting in Skeeter Davis's version. Abysmal.
* * *
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7948-1075133,00.html
The Times
No Super Trouper
Life still doesn't sound rosy for Abba's Agnetha, says Peter Paphides
What was it about the 1970s that made us temporarily blind to Very Obvious Things? How did we not stop to consider whether Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of a band called Queen, might be gay? And why the hell did all our dads think that Agnetha was the fun one in Abba? Since when was being clearly quite fed up with the whole business of being a pop star glamorous? Didn't it occur to anyone that the redhead standing next to her - the one bouncing up and down like a mink on heat in the video to Take a Chance on
Me - might actually be the fun one? I can't say that, at the age of seven, I was any the wiser. But as I got a bit older, it was harder to ignore the obvious. Being in Abba may have brought Agnetha fame and wealth beyond her wildest dreams, but it was clearly doing her head in.
A glance at her 1996 autobiography As I Am confirms as much. Chapters boasted titles such as Abba's Last Tour Was a Success but Awful for Me and There Was a Fever, There Were Ovations, There Were Sweaty Obsessed Crowds.
It's hard not to feel a little sorry for Björn. During Abba's glory years he could have indulged in the kind of bacchanals barely hinted at in the lyrics of Summer Night City. But, lest we forget, this was the decade of missing Very Obvious Things. Hence in 1971, having asked Agnetha to sing on a couple of his and Benny's rubbish early folk tunes, Björn asked her out - the family way beckoned. Do you reckon that a decade spent hitched to the perpetually homesick, congenitally maudlin Agnetha made him bitter? He's
never said so in interviews, but sometimes actions speak louder than words.
On The Winner Takes It All, Björn - now seeing another woman - wrote the
lines "But tell me does she kiss/ Like I used to kiss you/ Does it feel the same/ When she calls your name?" Then he got his ex-wife to sing them. When I met him two years ago he confessed that the song was written in a drunken outpouring of self-pity. No s***.
Agnetha probably thought that the dissolution of Abba would cheer her up. So far, it hasn't really worked. The solo career never took off. Promoting her 1984 single Can't Shake Loose, she tottered on to The Late Late Breakfast Show in stilettoes and prove-a-point miniskirt. She tripped and fell flat on her face, an experience that upset her sufficiently to warrant an entire chapter in As I Am. "As I lay in the hollow," she wrote memorably, "I remember thinking that if I can just get up, I'll save the show." What a (super) trouper.
If you: (a) found As I Am as fascinating as I did; and (b) were rather disappointed by those post-Abba solo records, you certainly won't be disappointed by Agnetha's comeback album. My Colouring Book is composed of cover versions that echo the events of her life. All the songs are taken from the 1960s - apparently, the last decade in which Agnetha felt truly happy. She has mostly eschewed the usual jukebox classics. A life of being rubbish with men (in 1997 she even entered into a relationship with a stalker) seems to have informed the track listing. Sometimes When I'm Dreaming, written by Mike Batt, is a heartrending memoir of a woman reconciled to life without love: "It's only when I'm dreaming that I fall in
love for real/ But I wake up screaming." If I Thought I Could Ever Change Your Mind sees our heroine taunting herself with an unrequited lover's fantasy over a chamber pop arrangement that eclipses Cilla Black's original.
Great play has been made of the fact that she has cancelled all interviews to do with the album. In fact, it's more surprising that, after years of Garboesque seclusion, she entertained the notion in the first place. After all, the performances on My Colouring Book can't do anything other than prompt speculation concerning the well-being of the woman singing them.
Take, for instance, a mildly delirious monologue called Past, Present and Future, in which she mourns a past of "silent joys" and "broken toys" and guesses at her prospects: "It doesn't look good at the moment/ I don't think it will ever happen again." Personal? Compared to this, The Winner Takes It All sounds positively elliptical.
* * *
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Sara Russell, Sandhurst, UK
AGNETHA MOVEMENT ON DUTCH CHART - Posted at 6:24 AM
Agnetha's single went from #29 to #10 in the Pepsi Chart of Dutch Free record shop!!!
In the Mega Top 50 she went from 39 to 24!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Gé Teunissen, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
CD:UK CHART - Posted at 6:23 AM
Agnetha was number 10 on CD:UK's (music TV show) Saturday Chart! This is a sort of prediction of the Sunday one, usually very similar to the official chart.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Penny Jackson, Derby, UK.
SWEDISH PREMIERE FOR AGNETHA VIDEO IN GAY VENUE Posted at 6:21 AM
I read this story in Aftonbladet about the upcoming premiere of Agnetha's new video. Here's my translation:
-------------
http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/noje/story/0,2789,463607,00.html
Premiere for Fältskog's new video
Will be shown in gay bar
On April 20th it'll be the world premiere for Agnetha Fältskog's new video "When you walk in the room".
This glittering world premiere will take place in the gay bar Torget in Stockholm. The former ABBA-member will be celebrated throughout the evening.
By Linda Hjertén
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Thanks to ABBAMAILer Claes Davidsson, Orlando, Florida, USA
BIG WEEK ON THE CHARTS - Posted at 6:17 AM
UK:
ABBA: GOLD is down 4 to #8
Agnetha Fältskog:If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind is new at #11
This gives Agnetha her highest charting single in UK history, but not only that, she came in well ahead of expectations, and well ahead of two of the more favoured singles of the week, both of which were expected to be top ten: Janet Jackson, whom could barely manage a top 15 placing, and Dido, who couldn't even scrape the top 20.
NETHERLANDS:
Agnetha Fältskog: If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind is up 4 from last
week's placing of #24 (Up 15 from #39), to a top 20 entry at #20.
Agnetha Fältskog: My Colouring Book album is new in at #31.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Dean Scapolo, Wellington, New Zealand
UK DAILY MAIL REVIEW AGNETHA'S ALBUM - Posted at 6:15 AM
Taken from the Daily Mail on April 18 2004
RATING = 3 stars out of 5.
" The former ABBA start made news earlier this month when she snubbed the fifth birthday of Mamma Mia at London's Prince Edward Theatre. Here in a rare solo offering . the reclusive diva gives us her intriguing take on Sixties pop. Avoiding the decades more obvious anthems- there are no Beatles, Stones, or
Motown tracks here- Agnetha focuses on the melodramatic torch songs of Cilla Black and the Searchers. Made in the same Stockholm studio once used by ABBA, My Colouring Book is corny in places, but still reveals a genuine affection for the era's forgotten pop tunes. "
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Chris Bowles, Hemingford Grey, UK
NO. #11 IS BLOODY GOOD! - Posted at 1:09 AM
A very f****** jetlagged Graeme Read reporting here from Sydney, Australia:
Thank you to the many, many people who wrote to me to advise that Agnetha's single debuted in the British charts at #11. Yes, it was just outside the Top 10 but only by 60 copies or something inconsequential like that.
#11 is bloody good - no promotion, little airplay and a star that spends four years recording and album and then refuses to push it in the market! Take all that into account and #11 is more than bloody good - it is a damn miracle.
And it is all thanks to you guys - the fans who did the right thing and followed ABBAMAIL's maximum impact campaign to the absolute letter. You bought multiple copies, you bought them at the right shops and you rang/emailed the media to get the single noticed.
You'll probably never hear any thanks from Agnetha or WEA but the team at ABBAMAIL Administration thanks you profusely and has been proud to work together with you on this campaign.
People - WE MADE A DIFFERENCE! WE MADE THE MAXIMUM IMPACT FOR AGNETHA'S NEW SINGLE!
Give yourselves a great big pat on the back if you participated in the campign - you bloody well deserve it!
Fingers crossed for the album (I bought it at the ABBF Day but couldn't resist buying a "chart" copy at Virgin on the way back through London)
Hugs and thanks from Graeme, Grant and Ian at ABBAMAIL HQ
April 16, 2004
ABBAMAILer's first thoughts on AGNETHA's album - Posted at 9:08 PM
I have now listened to all of Agnetha's album and here's my review :
1. My Colouring book : I adore this song and after having heard Barbra's version so often, I was actually really afraid if Agnetha would be able to sing this very hard
track,but she pulls it off more than brilliantly. She sounds amazing and it's a perfect opener for a fantastic album.
2. When you walk in the room : Amazing,rock'n roll,Spector ... Summer hit!!!!!!! Has to be a single 3. If I Thought ....
4. Sealed with a kiss : I am not too crazy about the arrangement. I think it's a bit "naked". But it is a perfect showcase for her voice though. Still, not a favourite
5. Love me with all your heart : Fabulous !!!! So sweet and romantic. This is Hasta Manana Agnetha anno 2004. Love the Spanish bit
6. Fly me to the moon : This is shockingly gorgeous !!!!! LOL. One of my all-time favourite songs and this version is among the best ever. Very bossa-nova,laid-back and extremely cool. She sings it so "lounge". Adore it.
7. Past Present and Future : I think the Swedish accent is actually what makes this song sexy. Still, I think this will cause lots of different reactions. My verdict : LOVE it! 8. A Fool am I : Big Ballad. Great vocals. Very true to Cilla's version.
9. I can't reach your heart : This is where she uses here plaintive vocal style most efficiently. Watch out for the bit where she goes "but I try and I try ...." She goes
very high and it's magic. And you can feel that she loves singing this one. Her heart is so in it !!!!
10. Sometimes when I'm dreaming : The biggest surprise from the album. I don't remember her ever having sung so extremely strong after The Winner Takes It All. It's a bit like Maybe it was magic,but her vocals are so much better. God,you fall in love with her all over again when you hear this one. It's so gorgeous it makes you cry and she lives the lyric through and through. 11. The End of The World : Sweet,very sweet,but a bit forgettable after the previous one.
12. Remember me. Not a very exciting song,but the singing is magnificent !!!!
13. What now my love : Just like so many others this is the best song on the album. The arrangement is utterly brilliant and this HAS to be a single. What a way to close an incredible album !!!!
Verdict : Never Never Never have I received so much,yet expected so much less. It is an incredible album by an incredible voice !!!! We are all gonna be enjoying this album for ever !!!!!!!!! Thank you Agnetha !!!!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Jurgen Parys, Bremen, Germany
FIRST FAN REVIEW OF AGNETHA'S ALBUM - Posted at 4:51 AM
"Just bought it in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and i just LOVE it. It's a very crafty. acoustic, well sung and very tastefully produced record, one Agnetha can be proud of. It keeps singing in my head after playing it only once! At last, the blonde Goddess has returned!!"
Thanks to ABBA fan Joost, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
DUTCH ABBAMAILers HAVE IT ALREADY! - Posted at 4:45 AM
Reports from Dutch ABBAMAILers excitedly tell us that they already have Agnetha's new album MY COLOURING BOOK. They have been able to buy it in the Netherlands today. The feedback about the album has been terrific with people already picking out their favourite tracks.
The album is set for release in the UK and other territories during the next week whilst the ABBF Club will be selling it at their ABBA Day on Saturday (17th April).
Graeme Read/ABBAMAIL Administration
TIME OUT REVIEWS AGNETHA ALBUM - Posted at 4:40 AM
There is a small review on page 98 of this week's London Time Out (April 14-21) of My Colouring Book.
Agnetha Fältskog 'My Colouring Book' WEA
Living reclusively in Sweden for most of the 22 years since ABBA split up, Agnetha Fältskog was never going to be one for a wham-bam comeback. In 'My Colouring Book', she makes a cautious and low-key return to the biz.
A covers collection which draws (pre-dominantly) on '60s classics, 'My Colouring Book' wisely opts for elegant sweepy string-drenched pop rather than cheesy favourites from her former band's golden '70s period. As a singer who had already enjoyed solo success pre-ABBA in her home country, Agnetha's crisp, clipped voice suits the drama of 'Sealed With A Kiss' and 'Past, Present And Future'. As she coos through 'The End Of The World', you can't help recalling that sad, turn-away-from-everyone-having-fun expression she saved for ABBA's best videos. On the new single, a version
of the old Cilla hit, 'If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind', her little-girl-lost voice has moments of Lightening Seeds about it. . .
All in all, these are good songs well done, and it'll probably appeal to the older end of the ABBA fanbase; music for people who watch 'The Royal' and Heartbeat' for the soundtracks. If it's success lures Fältskog back into the studio, then a collaboration along the lines of Dusty Springfield's work with Pet Shop Boys might produce results we can get seriously excited about.
Laura Lee Davies
(over the shoulder colour pic with slogan 'Agnetha's back!')
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Julie Rickwood, UK
April 15, 2004
AGNETHA ALBUM IN SOUTH AFRICA - Posted at 11:05 PM
For those keeping an eye on international release dates etc., the South African version of My Colouring Book will be in stores Monday 19th April.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Mike Scurr, Cape Town, South Africa
MUSIC WEEK UPDATE - Posted at 10:54 PM
If you need to know, the catalogue number for Agnetha's My Colouring Book UK CD WEA 5046731222
The following outlets are showing for in-store promotion of the Agnetha CD next week - Tesco, Sainsbury's and Woolworths.
If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind has dropped off the Top 50 Radio Airplay Chart, also from Radio 2's Top 10 airplay list, and therefore drops from 8 to 17 on the Pre-Release Top 20 with an audience of 11.64m. It will fall off completely next week as it is now officially released.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Paul Campbell, Edinburgh, UK
UK MAGAZINE MENTION - Posted at 10:45 PM
UK Magazine of the Week
The only magazine that I could find so far with ANYTHING about last Tuesday 6 April is the small A5 sized "Star" magazine with David Beckham on the cover.
p.43 has a small picture of ABB on stage and a few words about Agnetha being
missing:-
"The fourth member of ABBA snubbed a star-studded tribute concert for the group. The West End Abba-inspired musical Mamma Mia! celebrated a five year run and invited the original members of the Swedish group to join in the fun.
Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid were joined by Peter Waterman, who presented them with platinum discs. However, Agnetha was absent. "There should be others here, but maybe thery're too modest or don't want to hog the limelight, " said ex-hubby and bandmate Björn.
Despite rumours she will promote a solo album, Agnetha still lives like a recluse on an island off the Swedish coast."
On p.117 there's a good review of her single:-
ABBA's blonde one is back after years in hiding. And guess what? she sounds great. Of course, it helps that the song's a right corker (originally a 1969 hit for the screechier Cilla Black), but she makes this lovely ballad sound like it was written by Benny and Björn in ABBA's heyday. *****
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Sara Russell, Sandhurst, UK
ASDA/AGNETHA - Posted at 10:33 PM
Bjorn interview on UK radio:
Agnetha
I got the CD 2 yesterday but I popped into Asda early today thinking that they would not have the single in stock yet. They didn't have the Red single but had a handful of the Blue single, then I saw it was placed in their charts at No. 20!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Dionne Kennedy, Colne, UK
April 14, 2004
AGNETHA GOOD FOR MID-WEEK - BUT WHAT ABOUT SUNDAY? - Posted at 8:32 PM
Agnetha's placing in the mid-week British chart is No. 9 and that's wonderful news. What we need to do is ensure that between now and Friday that it doesn't slip down the charts. It is possible that sales will fall leaving her in a mediocre chart position if we're not careful.
If you have so far only managed to buy one copy of CD1 and CD2, what I suggest you do is open that wallet of yours and get down to the shops on Thursday/Friday and buy a second (or even third!) copy of each of the CD singles. We are aiming for maximum impact for the all important chart announcement this Sunday.
After that, it is up to radio and the general public to continue its success. Our job is just to get it on the charts at a high debut position. If it debuts in the Top 10 it will get noticed by radio and other media and it will have a domino effect both on the single and the new album which will be released on Monday (19th April).
Thanks for everyone who was made an impact so far - it is obviously working well - but we need to keep the momentum up. This is the first time in 17 years she has had a new single out - we can all afford to spend a few £1.99s here and there!
Graeme Read
ABBAMAIL Administration
AGNETHA no. 9 IN MIDWEEK CHART - Posted at 7:13 PM
Wow, fantastic, beyond my wildest dreams!
However, before we get over excited, she is likely to drop by the weekend. For example, Pet Shop Boys "Flamboyant" was 7 midweek but fell to 12 by the weekend. I think Agnetha has a similar sort of loyal fanbase but once we have all bought the single Monday and Tuesday, she won't have enough sales left to maintain Top 10 by the weekend.
Nevertheless, I don't care. I think it is absolutely amazing the she has a guaranteed Top 20 position. Who on earth would have thought it 6 months ago? Who would have thought she was going to have her highest ever UK solo singles chart position or that it would be by over 20 places!
I am really quite excited about the buzz this will create around the album which I think is also guaranteed Top 20 but I wouldn't go beyond that for the moment.
Maybe we'll see the video on TV now!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Stephen Bryceland Glasgow, Scotland
ANOTHER NEW AGNETHA TRACK Posted at 6:50 AM
Go to:
http://www.schiffers.fm/index.asp
Click at the bottom of the page 'Archief'
Go to: '13 april' and click 'audio'
Realplayer will start...
go to 1:29 and after 33 seconds "When You Walk In The Room" will booooooost out of your speakers!
I am so enthusiastic here now listening to this, but you might have noticed that....uhum...;-)))
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Lex Corbach Ten Boer The Netherlands
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE MONDAY - REPORT - Posted at 6:39 AM
I couldn't get to the shops yesterday because of family things, so I had to buy the single today. HMV in Portsmouth was displaying several copies of the 'blue' single in the 'new releases' section, but they also had the 'red' cover under 'F' for Faltskog. Virgin had both covers prominantly displayed with a little description of the single (and as Greame's already said, 'Faltskog' spelt without the 'T').
Woolworths didn't have it and neither did WH Smith.............but in WH Smiths ABBA are No. 1 and 2 on their DVD music chart with 'The Winner Takes It All' documentary at No 1 and 'In Concert' at No 2.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Luke Sweeny, Portsmouth, UK.
DUTCH JUMP FOR AGNETHA SINGLE - Posted at 6:33 AM
Agnetha's single entered the Dutch Mega Top 50 at 39.
It's even better in its second week up 15 places to No. 24!
I never never expected it to do so well. It might seem nothing special for those of you living in the UK where the charts are completely different to here in the Netherlands. I believe in the UK its rather common for a single to enter in the top 10 or so but not over here.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Monique Hoevens, Tilburg, The Netherlands
AGNETHA ON DUTCH RADIO & LINK Posted at 6:30 AM
This will is the first of several messages that I hope to send to the list to provide all of you with links to tracks that have been played during the day on Dutch Radio 2 from Agnetha's new CD. Don't know if I'll manage to find the links to other tracks, but I'll try. This was the first track, broadcasted this morning in the breakfastshow "Love Me With All Your Heart":
LINK:
http://info.omroep.nl/vara?nav=rdkbHsHzGHCiPvO
Go to 'Dinsdag 13 april' and click the word 'hier'. Realplayer will open on your screen and the show starts, fast-forward it to 2:31 and after 28 seconds the song starts...
I LOVE it, love her voice, love the mood, love the Spanish lyrics in the song....
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Lex Corbach Ten Boer The Netherlands
VARIOUS NEWS / AGNETHA ALBUM REVIEW - Posted at 6:09 AM
Agnetha's album is reviewed in the Evening Standard today and gets two stars out of three. Here's the review, written by Pete Clark:
Agnetha Fältskog, the blonde from Abba, hit the headlines last weke for not turning up at the Mamma Mia! fifth birthday celebrations. But here is a new record to soothe our frustrated passions and alleviate the discomfort of her physical absence.
My Colouring Book , it is explained by the PR hyperbole machine, is a work of deep personal conviction, being the result of four years' research into the music of the Sixties. I'm not one to quibble in the general scheme of things, but how long could it take her to find Brian Hyland's Sealed With A Kiss, or that Frank Sinatra favourite Fly Me To The Moon, or even the Searchers' gem When You Walk In The Room?
Quibbles aside, I love this record. Agnetha's melancholic drips all over the title track (sample lyric: "These are the eyes that watched him as he walked away, colour them grey") and Cilla's If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind. Buy sherry, turn it up, weep.
---------
An ABBA fan friend of mine bought Agnetha's single in London today and discovered that it was almost sold out. The shop assistants couldn't believe how well it's selling apparently and thought it could make a top 5 position. Well, we shall see...
If anyone was holding out any hope about the Agnetha appearance on Parkinson, the word from someone who works on the program is that Agnetha cancelled, with no plans for a reschedule.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Paul Carter London, UK
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE MONDAY - REPORT - Posted at 1:55 AM
Went down to Watford this morning after yesterdays dissapointing day in St. Albans where only Woolworths had one copy of the blue CD-which I snapped up!. Today both HMV and Virgin Megastore in Watford had loads of copies of
both CDs. So I bought yet another blue one and a red one in each HMV and Virgin. Got them home and played the red Almighty mixes. Fantastic!
I was expecting that "radio" edit which can be listened to at www.agnetha.se to be featured on one or the other but the second CD has just the normal version like it is on the blue CD, so is that "radio" edit going to be a rarity we all look for and never get? Adds to the mystery a bit! The blue edit is cool though too-haunting and spooky. So now its Sunday
night we have to wait for the chart. Does anyone know where to go see midweek chart sales? I know some people in the industy get a half way score of sales.
Anyway, going to pop on CD2 Almighty mixes again. My favourite.
Thanks to ABBA fan Diego Lopez, St.Albans, UK
(From ABBAMAIL Admin: Diego, no idea about the radio edit - we had some people expect a special radio edit to be on CD1 but it didn't happen - if we find out more will update this page with the details)
April 13, 2004
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE MONDAY REPORT - Posted at 10:18 PM
I decide to take ten minutes out at lunch to try and get my hands on the two UK single releases. I head to the nearest shopping mall, calling in to buy both singles from the Virgin store. Should be there. They have a special section for New Releases, with Eamon the clear favourite. I pick
up the Eamon single (I like it and it was only £1.99). If you're not familiar with this track, there is a "clean" version and a "dirty" version, and the cheaper option is with all 33 expletives. But I digress.
So I see about five copies of the "blue" CD1, but no CD2 at all. I ask behind the counter, and they check the back, but they had sold out. I decide to call in at Woolworths, (another ten minute drive away), as they also help the chart returns. But again, they only have the blue single, and just the one copy - at #19 on their pre-release chart.
I have to go into the centre of the city to actually get my hands on the red CD2, and both HMV and Virgin had several copies. HMV has a large vinyl section, and I asked about a DJ 12", but they had no record of it on their computer.
So I finally got my hands on both singles and think both the blue remix and the Almighty mixes are fantastic. Virgin were claiming the blue mix was done by "Blue", so I am not sure if there is a remixer called Blue or whether they think that Simon, Duncan, Anthony and Lee of boyband Blue had actually reworked Agnetha's track..... I always thought "blue" was just referring to a more 'melancholy, late night' version! Then again, maybe it's just because the single has a blue cover!
You live and learn.
So much for being away from work for just ten minutes!
Hearing about the reduced stocks everywhere is probably more to do with
the shops not really stocking up correctly in advance or perhaps delivery issues over Easter. Or maybe they just underestimated the overall demand. Certainly from my observations of records released this week (and I have done a survey of at least 4 shops today!) it would look as if Eamon is a
shoe-in for #1 in Scotland, with D-12 (featuring Eminem) also a high new entry.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Paul Campbell, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE MONDAY REPORT - Posted at 10:16 PM
Here is the report from the Bristol Jury.
Virgin Megastores - oodles and oodles of both discs Woolworths - A stack of Disc 2 and a big gap where Disc 1 was.... V-Shop - both in stock.
Couldn't be bothered with HMV as I was hung over.....again ;-)
My partner is now sick of the song so I have reassured him there will be a whole album of different songs for him to be sick of soon!!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Martin, UK
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE MONDAY REPORT - Posted at 10:13 PM
It was very exciting to be able to walk into the record stores today and buy the **NEW SINGLE** from Agnetha.
As I had a few to buy (not all for me!), I did a tour round the main London stores (HMV, Tower, Virgin) to get copies at each. Started off at HMV Piccadilly where I found the single prominently displayed in the new release section and then to be found at F in the A-Z section as Faltskog, Agnetha (ABBA). Fabulous to see it sitting there on the shelves.
Then across to Virgin to get some more, where they had a notice next to the single explaining about Agnetha's comeback. Over to Tower where I couldn't see it in the A-Z section or anywhere nearby and was about to demand to know what was going on until I saw it in the new releases section after all.
Walked up Carnaby Street, by this time with CD2 at full volume on my CD walkman heading towards the big HMV to pick up some more copies (filed under F). Then a little further on to Virgin, where they only had CD2. I had two more of these to get, so that was my last stop for today.
I hope that everyone has their Agnetha ringtone by now. I love it!
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Paul Carter, London, UK
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE MONDAY REPORT - Posted at 10:09 PM
Went into Cambridge today, to pick up the singles from HMV. Had total success there as both copies of the single were on display. So naturally both went into the shopping basket, and have been played to death already !
The shelves seemed well stocked of both versions, one for £1.99 & the other for £2.99. It isn't everyday one can say "I have just got Agnetha's latest single", so I was very pleased.
So it seems, if you want to get both versions of the CD at the same time, visit HMV in Cambridge - but look around throughly for it, as they are just above floor level in the area of new singles - I almost missed them !
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Chris Bowles, Hemingford Grey. near Cambridge, United Kingdom
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE MONDAY REPORT - Posted at 10:06 PM
I went into all the main shops today, Virgin had it among the other new releases. They didn't have loads on display but they gave it more shelf space than Dido.
HMV didn't have it on their main new release display and chose to put it next to other low profile releases such as Dido.
Music Zone didn't have it at all, but they did have Dido.
The reason I mention Dido is because I guess that they're both aiming for a similar market.
I'm hoping for top 10 and expect that the "Fuck It" song will go to the top.
There were no sweaty obsessed crowds queuing up for the single in Middlesbrough unfortunately, the only sweaty obsessed types round here are the smackheads.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Tony Wilson, Middlesbrough, UK
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE MONDAY REPORT - Posted at 9:37 PM
Here's the result of the Camberley (Surrey) jury as there are no record
stores in Sandhurst.
CD2 readily available. No sign of CD1 in Virgin Megastore.
CD2 had two facings whereas other new singles had up to 12 each including
something called "F**k iT" ... lovely.
Two copies of CD2 purchased for the Russell and Bach households.
Still in pursuit of CD1 during the rest of the week. Could order it mail
order but won't affect chart placings, so won't be doing that.
And by the way, it really exists! Agnetha Fältskog has releasd a new
single!! There's a sentence I never thought I'd say again.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Sara Russell, Sandhurst, UK
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE MONDAY REPORT - Posted at 9:35 PM
I sent my mum to HMV on Saturday to check the Easter Monday opening hours,
and it opened at 10.30 so like a true sweaty obsessed fan (actually it would
have been the most convenient time anyway due to poor bus services and going
to London at about 11) I was there almost as soon as the shop opened. On the
new releases shelf there were 4 "piles" of it, 3 of the blue cover and
one of the red. Being there so early in the morning eliminated the risk of it
selling out, but I have no idea how many are left now. The shelf was quote
full so I think I was the first person to buy a copy-can anyone beat 10.38am
on their receipt (apart from you Dutch cheats!) :-)? I did think to check in
MVC and Virgin (I couldn't be bothered to go to Woolworths, couldn't
remember where it was anyway!), Virgin seemed to have a good stock but MVC,
a major chain had none at all!!! I'm hoping it might have been because it
was so early they hadn't even put this week's new releases out yet?
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Penny Jackson, Derby, UK
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE DAY: GRAEME'S REPORT - Posted at 3:31 AM
Here I am in London at the Easyjet Internet Cafe under Burger King at Picadilly Circus.
I have now bought copies of CD1 and CD2 of Agnetha's single at Virgin, HMV and Tower! Virgin ony had CD2 but they had lots of it. I have been doing my part to get the Mad Woman(TM) on the British charts and I hope you people have also been doing your bit.
Virgin had a little cardboard thingy on the shelf above the single. Said her name was AGNETHA FALSKOG. Still, it's the thought that counts!
I've been advised by a web site regular that there have been some stock problems in the surburban/country stores with the single and that some have it 'out the back'. Don't know what that's all about but there's still 4 more days to make an impact with sales so don't let Day 1 stock problems stop you from getting out there and making maximum impact!
Meanwhile.....
ABBA GOLD CD/DVD is high on all the main charts - Top 5 - which is sensational. Lots of stock around. £10.99 at Virgin & Tower but £13.99 at HMV.
HMV in Oxford Street had some copies of the box set for £24.99 instead of £42.99 but there must be a few ABBA fans in town cos they're all gone now ;- )
The ABBA GOLD display in the HMV window is now also gone but I managed to take a couple of shots of it last week. Very nice and tasteful display.
I picked up the ATTITUDE that has the ABBA LIVE IN CONCERT advertisement - tres nice! LIVE DVD is also going well in the charts on its first week of release. Prices vary again from £14.99 to £16.99 in the major city stores.
Old Compton Street doesn't seem the same this week without all the hype and buzz around the Prince Edwards Theatre :(
Well that's it from me reporting from London.
Graeme Read
ABBAMAIL Administration
AGNETHA NEW RELEASE DAY: MEET JOANNE - Posted at 3:28 AM
I headed out to Harrow earlier today where my nearest serious shopping experience is and went traipsing round HMV, MVC, Virgin, WH Smith, Tesco (!) and Woolies only to find Agnetha out of stock in all but Woolies, which is where I encountered Joanne.
Meet Joanne.
Joanne is a 16 year old high school drop-out who is busy forging a career behind the CD counter in Woolworths. Attractive in oiled hair pulled back severely in a bun, with heavy oversized gold earrings, half a dozen trashy gold sovereign rings, heavily bitten red-polished nails, spots and a pregnancy version of the uniform, she endeavoured to help me when I could only find a couple of copies of the 'standard' single (at no.19 as someone else reported). The conversation went something like this:
Cliff: Have you got the Agnetha Fältskog single in the almighty mix version?
Joanne: A single by Almighty? Never heard of them. Are they black?
Cliff: No idea, but it's not by them. They did the mix that's all.
Joanne: Who's it by then?
C: Agnetha Fältskog.
J: Who? Never heard of... is it a him or a her?
C: Her.
J: Funny name ain't it? Is she black?
C: Only her humour.
J: What?
C: Nothing.
J: Well we ain't got nothing by her.
C: You have. Her single's out on display.
J: Izzit? Just bring it to the counter then sir and I'll ring it up.
C: No I want the almighty mix. It's CD2 and the one on display is CD1.
J: Oh I seeeeeeee. Hold on. René, do we have that song by Agatha Falsecock in a dance mix?
René: What is is it Jo? You alright?
J: Yeah I'm alright. Do we have that Agatha Falsecock song in a CD2 mix?
R: Don't think we have anything by her....
C: You have three on in display.
R: Oh that's fine then. Sorry about that. Just bring one to the till and Joanne will ring it up
C: No, I want the Almighty mix. You know like club mix? Goes "a boom danga danga boom booom zhhhhhh boom danga if I thought.... if i thought.... dah dah dahhhhh banga boom"
R: Oh we got nuffing like that.
C: How about out the back?
J: No it wouldn't be.
C: Can't you just check?
R: Who is it again... A never false scot? If you'd like to wait a minute I'll check then.
3 non-checking seconds later.....
R: No we ain't got it. Sorry.
C: But you didn't look!
R: i did. I just peered round the corner. Didn't need to do any more because there's nothing by her.
J: 'Ere I know 'er, isn't she in ABBA?
C: Yes she was.
J: Oh I saw them once at the Mean Fiddler with my nan
C: Um... I don't think so.
J: Oh yes it was defintely them. That one with the beard, whats his name, he played a saxaphone
C: Um I think you saw Bjorn Again.
J: No, it was ABBA. I'm certain.
C: Ok, you saw ABBA....
J: Can I help you with anything else sir?
C: Just point me at the chocolate easter eggs. I may need several.....
So that was that. Well I've embellished a bit, but it's more or less the essence of what happened.
All the shops I went into said they'd had supplies but they'd gone quickly. HMV said there's more stock coming in tomorrow once the holidays are over, which is good news.
In the end I went into the West End which I absolutely did NOT want to do because the shops are mental at Easter but I got my grubby hands on the almighty mix in the HMV by Bond Street tube station. I have to say I'm not a fan of these mixes usually but I really, really like this one.
All in all a good lunchtime.
Thanks to ABBAMAILer Cliff Docherty Wembley UK
April 11, 2004
DER SPIEGEL ARTICLE Posted at 11:29 PM
Here's a translation of the Spiegel article which Austrian ABBAMAILer Charley sent to the list. You should be able to access it via this link:
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,294589,00.html
I had to do the tranlsation very quickly, so excuse clumsiness and spelling errors.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Just like Garbo
The legendery Swedish quartett, Abba [sic.] might not want to reunite, but one of the singers is releasing a Solo-CD for the first time since 17 years.
It was 4 years ago since the four pop veterans of the Swedish group Abba got an offer (proposal) of almost indecent/immoral dimensions: a consortium of British and American business people offered then a Billio US-Dollars for a reunion tour
"Because of the sum we had to of course think about it - for such an amount of money one can build a number of hospitals", said Björn Ulvaues, one of the two Abba-songwriters. "But we decided against it, because the fear of disappointing the audience every evening was way too big, so that we didn't want to do that to ourselves, not for all the money in the world´".
(Picture caption: Singer Fältskog: notoriously shy)
As a consolation for the fans and to commemorate the 30the anniversary of triumph of "Waterloo" at the ESC, a DVD, "Abba-In Concert" is being released, a recoding of the historical concerts 25 years ago. Also the orotund coffee-table book "Abba - Fotografien 1974 - 1980" is already in the shops. The most important sign of life from the present, however, comes from Agnetha Fältskog: the blond from Abba is making a comebach with her first solo album after 17 years.
The 54-year old competently (with sovereinty) performs old songs by Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield und Petula Clark on her Comeback-opus "My Colouring Book" and on the first single from it "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind".
However, it isn't very spectacular; the most exciting thing about the record it the fact that it exists; the notoriously shy artist Fältskog is called the second Garbo by Swedish journalists.
Fältskog recorded at im Atlantis-Studio in Stockholm, where Abba once recorded their first hits and where there is still a piano from Benny Andersson. "I had built up a kind of a microphone-phobia, which I had only got over after three to foru weeks," she said, "almost like a blocked up line, which is at once suddenly free."
The idea of coming back into the limelight after such a long time must have been so intimidating, that she shortly cancelled all interviews concerning her new record.
It seems that Agnetha Fältskog is the one from all Abba members who was least able to deal with the immense fame of the quartet. When she started off as a solo singer in the late 60s in Sweden, one her biggest dreams was to make it one day into the national charts, she said in a BBC Abba documentary, in which she was the only one [of the four] who didn't want to speak in front of the cameras.
(Photocaption: Pop group Abba: Billion offer for a new tour)
The fame that she experienced with Abba quickly became a nightmare, she states in her autobiography: "I had the feeling that the fans would take control of me and never let me go. It is a very thin border between ecstatic celebration and threat. After the Abba finale in 1982 she released a couple of solo albums and then retreated completely.
The rediscovery of Abba began in the mid-90s when the compilation "Gold" surprisingly became a big hit.
What also helped was that the hip and young pop generation very surprisingly showed great enthusiasm towards the ucool Abba hits: The Electropop-Duo Erasure fluked a best seller with Abba cover versions. U2 Singer Bono came out as a fan and invited Abba makers Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson on stage for a joint version of "Dancing Queen" at a U2 concert Als such greats as Moby, Joey Ramone, Kurt Cobain and Tina Turner openly confessed their love to Abba.
Countless Abba imitations like Björn Again from Australia benefited financially from this Boom. "If only they'd stop copying our allegedly Swedish accents when making their announcements", Ulvaeus complained.
The biggest coup in the past years became the Abba-Musical "Mamma Mia!", which is running [among other places] in Hamburg as well as in Seoul and so far has been watched by more that 10 mllion people; it has brought a world-wide winning of around 750 million dollars and made Abba writers Andersson and Ulvaeus "richer than Abba ever did", so the latter.
Nevertheless, the male-duo works till today on new music. At the moment they are busy translating their successful Swedish musical "Kristina från Duvemala" into English.
Besides, there has been at least a private Abba-Reunion. At a birthday party of a mutual friend (the German word "Freund" means a male friend ;-))) all four of then met a couple of years ago for the first time in years: to make music, however, it wasn't good enough. "What would have come out of that!!?" |
