pop music
Agnetha Fältskog with a contemporary solo album
The Swedish singer Agnetha Fältskog presents a new album. photo
© Kristina Elofsson/Presse Peter/Bmg Rights Management/Warner/dpa
Agnetha Fältskog’s new album “A+” is pure pop music from Sweden. The Abba icon gave her last solo project more momentum – and that’s really good for the music.
Together with the other northern lights Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad, Fältskog formed the Swedish cult band Abba in the 1970s. With hits like “Waterloo”, “Dancing Queen”, “Mamma Mia”, “Fernando” and “Super Trouper”, the quartet achieved one global success after another and caused a real Abbamania in Germany and other countries.
Abba shaped the pop world for years. After this dazzling, decade-long period came to an end, the reserved Fältskog largely withdrew from the public eye, but without saying farewell to music entirely: she released albums as a solo artist several times, most recently “A” in 2013 made it to number three in the German album charts, among other things – and now provides the template for “A+”, which will be released this Friday (October 13th).
How would it sound today?
“A few years ago I heard one of the songs from my last album “A” on the radio,” Fältskog, now 73, reported to her fans when she announced her new album at the end of August on her dedicated Instagram account. “Suddenly it occurred to me what the album would sound like if we had made it today. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
So Fältskog got to work. With the idea of a new edition, she approached producer Jörgen Elofsson, who had once written the material for “A” especially for her. Elofsson brought his younger colleague Anton Mårtensson on board to completely revise and modernize the music from 2013 and bring it into 2023. The original lyrics remained, but the old music, which in 2013 was consciously intended to represent a counterpart to the prevailing electronic dance music, was fundamentally replaced by new rhythms – and with success.
The result is a contemporary studio album that fits easily into today’s pop world and can be listened to in one go. None of the songs on “A+” fall in quality, and Fältskog’s clear, sensitive soprano voice carries you through all the states of love that she loves to sing about in so many ways.
What’s surprising is the faster tempo that many of the songs feature compared to their “A” counterparts. This makes the album noticeably faster and often more danceable. “A+” can therefore not only be played on the car radio or during a cozy evening with friends at home, but also in the bar and – with a few exceptions – on the dance floor.
A completely different, more relaxed atmosphere
Fältskog has already released four of the songs in advance, most notably “Where Do We Go From Here?”, the opener of the new album and the only song that is completely new on “A+”. It’s a pure pop song, followed at the beginning of the album by the faster, remixed “Back on Your Radio”. This song is replaced by the loving duet “I Should’ve Followed You Home” with Take That singer Gary Barlow, which, thanks to new rhythms, conveys a completely different, more relaxed mood than on “A”.
The following “Dance Your Pain Away” was the song on “A” that perhaps came closest to the Abba sound of days gone by – on “A+” it is a pop song that has arrived in 2023. Even though Fältskog and her iconic voice will forever be linked to Abba, the Swede shows one thing above all with such further developments in her solo music: she can be reduced to the one A of Abba, which she has stood for for around 50 years now and not their music.
Speaking of Abba: The Swedish cult band released their first joint studio album in almost 40 years in November 2021. “Voyage” was a musical return to the 70s with its typical Abba sound, but at the same time the group also showed that they still believe in themselves and their music today. As Fältskog now proves, she also does this as a solo artist.