Sing a new song, Chiquitita: ABBA's 'A' Agnetha Fältskog makes a return to pop music

A duet with Gary Barlow is on the new album released in May

Matilda Battersby
Tuesday 12 March 2013 12:01 GMT
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The blond tall one from ABBA is to sing once more like she did before. Having totally withdrawn from the limelight in 1988 Agnetha Fältskog is making a return to music with a new album.

“I never thought that I’d ever sing again. But hearing the first three songs [of the new album], I just couldn’t say no!” Fältskog said.

The new record, A, is set for release on 13 May and is preceded by the single “When You Really Loved Someone”.

Agnetha has been working with Grammy-nominated songwriter/producer Jorgen Elofsson.

“She wanted to make music again,” says Elofsson, “We could feel that. She had been thinking about it. Basically, she’s a musician, a songwriter/singer who hasn’t done that for a while. We saw her open up, become much happier, with music again in her life.”

The album features ten tracks, including “I Should’ve Followed You Home”, a duet with Gary Barlow and “I Keep Them On The Floor Beside My Bed” which she co-wrote

“I hadn’t written any music for a long, long time. But I sat at the piano, and suddenly it was there,” she said.

Fältskog was one quarter of ABBA along with her former husband Björn Ulvaeus and her friends Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson. Together they sold 370 million albums and singles worldwide.

Her distinctive vocals can be heard on “Waterloo”, "The Name of the Game", “Chiquitita” and “The Way Old Friends Do” among others.

Fältskog and Ulvaeus divorced in 1980 but they continued to perform as ABBA until late 1982. She went on to pursue a solo career and had some success with three English-language albums released in the Eighties.

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“We wanted to make this as if Agnetha hadn’t entered ABBA,” says Elofsson. “We were interested in what she would have sounded like if she hadn’t been in the group. And yet it’s important that she comes across as we remember her to be.”

The video for "When You Really Loved Someone" features actors in '70s clothes who resemble Fältskog and Ulvaeus.

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