Agnetha: A

Agnetha Faltskog was never really at ease with the ‘70s superstardom she ‘enjoyed’ as one quarter of Abba. Catapulted into the spotlight after winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Waterloo’, she seemed uncomfortable with the glittering stage productions, the outlandish get-ups, and the relentless media coverage that accompanied her fame as ‘the blonde one’ in the band. 

After the group split, for the most part Agnetha opted for a quiet life in the countryside. Now she has released A, her first record in almost a decade. Teaming up with production duo Peter Nordahl and Jorgen Elofsson has allowed the Swedish siren to make the kind of record you’d suspect she would have liked to produce while Bjorn, Benny and Anna-Frid were knocking around. Bar the effervescent ‘Dance Your Pain Away’, which could easily soundtrack a dance-off between Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan somewhere in the Mediterranean, there’s nothing flashy about A. From the off it’s all about well-correlated piano fillers and crystalline vocals demonstrating how time has failed to diminish one of the great voices of ‘70s pop. 
Cheesiness is littered throughout.‘I Should Have Followed You Home’, for instance, is a duet with Take That’s Gary Barlow. However, the gracefulness of Agnetha’s vocals ensures her first full length record in nine years is anything but a bore.

Key Track: ‘I Should Have Followed You Home’ feat. Gary Barlow