It’s a little-known fact but for the first couple of years or so after Eurovision, Agnetha was known as Anna in the UK, presumably because they assumed no one would be able to pronounce her name. The original sleeve for the Waterloo album had the credit, “Agnetha by courtesy of CBS-Cupol AB” but for the UK version, it was changed to Anna.
I first saw her referred to as Aggie in Smash Hits - would have been 1988 when I Stand Alone was released. Other than that I don’t think anyone really refers to her by that name. Agnetha is the Swedish derivative of Agnes, so maybe that’s where it stems from.
I know few ABBA album tracks, just all of iconic ABBA gold, plus a couple of others as well as whatever songs are in the Mamma Mia films. 5 minutes ago I listened to ABBA's Slipping Through My Fingers for the first time... FUCK. I'm gonna have to dive deep into all their stuff. I burst into tears hearing the two new songs because they are so amazing, but I'm almost mad at myself that in my 34 years on this earth I haven't got into all the ABBA albums sooner.
New single 'Just a Notion' due out Friday. Based on the snippet at first I thought it sounded like the 1978 vocal with a new backing track, but now I am not sure about the vocals. Whatever, I don't mind. The main reason the song wasn't put on the box set in 1994 was that B&B didn't like the mix and couldn't make it work. (It was rejected back in 1978-79 more because it felt too old-fashioned for the Voulez-Vous album, though on that album Angeleyes ended up with echoes of 60s girl groups)
I've just picked up a near mint (save some minor sleeve damage) copy of More ABBA Gold vinyl for a very reasonable price. Literally never seen it in real life before so I had to have it.
Came across this interview last night (starts at 0:31). It's mostly about The Slay Before You Came, but he talks about some other things too. My favorite line: "Tim Rice came along and said, 'I have this idea about chess.' And we said, oh god, that's boring, let's do that."
I had to come into the city for work today for the first time in a couple of months, caught the train, so spun up The Day Before You Came for the journey, watched the overcast skies haemhorrage rain and totally embodied Agnetha for 15 minutes. It was like being in the video, but the man playing with his phone in my eyeline wasn't cute.
They confirmed that this is their final album, no more music: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/oct/27/abba-reunion-interview-voyage-younger-selves Two new songs were left off the album unfinished.
"...and Benny said one was a demo of Just Like That 2.0, but that they still didn't like it." The fans:
