Agnetha Faltskog (5th April Birthday)

[john poole]

Agnetha Faltskog - born 5th April, 1950 (Jonkoping, Sweden)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvChjHcABPA&ob=av2e

[AndyM]

She sang some of the best vocals on a number of the best pop records ever, yet she is curiously under-praised as a vocalist.

[Adam Blake]

Let's all praise her then. Agnetha is fab, a singer whose voice virtually defined what a female pop singer should sound like in the 70s.

(But truth to tell, Abba never moved me, then or now.)

[gary booth]

Yes, I've never been bitten by the Abba bug either. I expect it's just me but one of the main reasons is - I just don't believe them. With all the pop factories we've grown up with and admired and/or loved they just seem 'manufactured' Despite the world and his wife and Paul Morley and Elvis Costello etc claiming it's pop of the highest order, all I hear is Eurovision. Heigh Ho, each to their own.

[AndyM]

Boys, boys, open up and drink deep at the well of Scandinavian melancholy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCBPkUxFZ5M

[uiwangmike]

I'd rate this as somewhat high-end songwriting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCBPkUxF ... re=related
And I've always liked Agnetha's version of my favourite Neil Sedaka song, to which I feel translation lends enchantment (and finally being elderly enough not to be ashamed to admit to having a favourite Neil Sedaka song).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5T5TaQCCV8

[AndyM]

Great minds think alike !

[uiwangmike]

Synchronicity! I find Andy and I have just posted the same clip amost simultaneously, separated only by two minutes (and 8 time zones).

[Adam Blake]

You mean the faceless middle classes lead pointless and empty lives in Sweden too? Oh no, this is too much to bear.

That was great folks, but I think I prefer "The Dancing Queen".

[AndyM]

But the quotidian bourgeois facelessness is redeemed by the transcendent transformativeness of love's arrival!!! (Too much for a Thursday afternoon? OK.)

'Dancing Queen' is also perfect.

[garth cartwright]

I never knew which of the girls was singing lead in Abba. Not that it mattered, they made so many great songs. My top 5 Abba:

1) SOS
2) Fernando
3) Dancing Queen
4) Knowing Me, Knowing you
5) Waterloo

I recall Rock Me being a big hit when I was a kid and pretty tasty but it is not on my Abba Greatest Hits. Life without Abba, hard to imagine...

[AndyM]

Agnetha had the higher voice, and the most leads. (And they're women, Garthy baby, not girls!)

[Adam Blake]

(And they're women, Garthy baby, not girls!)

All chick singers are women, man, the girls are in the audience...

[AndyM]

And the dirty old men are on the stage !

[Rob Hall]

I'd rate this as somewhat high-end songwriting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCBPkUxF ... re=related

Now that I finally get around to listening to it, I find that I must agree. Horrible music though.