Agnetha Faltskog
Most ABBA fans know that Agnetha Faltskog, singer in ABBA, was also a songwriter. She had a solo career in Sweden where she wrote most of her own music before joining ABBA. Despite this background, she only ever contributed two songs to ABBA's repertoire: "Disillusion" for the "Ring Ring" album, and "I'm Still Alive," a song performed live during the 1979 tour. Though the songwriters Bjorn and Benny encouraged her to contribute songs, she felt her work was inferior to theirs and didn't feel confident enough to participate. As such, Bjorn and Benny became the only songwriters for all of ABBA's music (with the exceptions of the aforementioned tracks and a charity medley, "Pick a Bale of Cotton/On Top of Old Smokey/Midnight Special").
But what was Agnetha's songwriting like? Why might she have felt inferior or insecure about her music? Because her solo career as a songwriter was cut short by the immense success of ABBA, we have a very disjointed view of her growth as a songwriter.
Let's take a brief tour through her discography.
Agnetha Faltskog (debut album)
She wrote lyrics for most of the songs on the album, but she specifically wrote the music for these three tracks:
1. Jag Var så kär
Her debut single and her first big hit. A very typical schlager in 3/4 time. She would write in this genre a lot over the coming years.
The song is noticeable for foreshadowing Agnetha's interest in key changes. The verses are in A minor, and the chorus is in A major. She could have chosen to go to the relative major of A minor, which is C#, but the decision to go to A major after the dominant E in the bridge lends an air of unexpected brightness to the chorus after the gloominess of the verse. She also uses a secondary dominant (B to E) to add even more brightness to the end of the chorus. These two tools (key changes, use of secondary dominants) will appear a lot more in her later works, so it's interesting to see that at 17 years old, she was already showing her harmonic inclinations.
2. Utan dej mitt liv går vidare
Another 3/4 schlager. Here she shows her love for schmaltz - but a lot of those schmaltzy songs had deceptively elaborate chord progressions in them, compared to the more straightforward harmonic palette of rock and roll. She has a way of starting songs out in a very conventional way, and then slowly adding more harmonic tricks. Nothing here is too out of the ordinary for the genre she's writing in, but it's pulled off well.
We have the return of her secondary dominants (A -> Dm), and a curious progression here:
C -> Em -> C7 -> F
Bb -> D7 -> G
The first line shows a conventional line cliche terminating in an F, but the use of the Bb is a a twist. The F has been temporarily tonicized due to the C7, but moving to the subdominant of the subdominant (in other words, the subtonic of the main key of C) is an unusual move. You can also read it as modal mixture from mixolydian. In any case, this borrowed chord adds an unexpected touch of solemnity or majesty when it appears. Even more unusual is then moving to the secondary dominant of the dominant (D7 -> G) ! Looking at the voice leading, there really is nothing preventing you from doing this - imagine the Bb descending to A or ascending to C, the D staying static, and the F going up a half step. It's simple - yet I'm pretty sure I've never used such a progression, and I'm certain it's a not a common one. It's a short moment in the song, but it shows what I consider Agnetha's strengths - her inventiveness with the palette of 50s/60s pop music.
3. Försonade
The final of the first three songs is still in the schlager vein, but the syrupy strings suggest a Hollywood romantic ballad. Once again, she starts with a very conventional chord progression, and you're lulled into thinking that she's going to play it straight this time. But then, in the chorus, we have... a key change! She goes up a whole step from Bb to C, but it's not just the truck driver's key shift. She gives us a chord progression leading to the dominant (G) of C. When we reach the chorus, the upward motion reaches its peak.
Eb Gm/D G Ge mig din hand nu, ge mig din kärlek Cm Am Dm A+/C# F/C G Ta mig i famnen igen.
The chorus also gives us a sneak preview of one of Agnetha's favorite tricks: hanging on a chord and then raising the top line by a semitone, introducing an augmented chord, before resolving in the subdominant. Bjorn and Benny would use this trick to great effect in "Mamma Mia" in 1974 (and also in the verses of the unreleased song "Just Like That"). But there's no B/B influence here - Agnetha wrote this by herself in 1968.
C C+ Förlåt, förlåt, F Dm Jag är din, bara din
With this trio of songs ends Agnetha's foray into songwriting on this album. "Jag var so kar" and "Utan Dej" were popular songs, showing her ear for melody. Most excitingly, we see that Agnetha enters the foray with a taste for all the delights of diatonic harmony. There are many professional songwriters today happy to stick to four-chord loops who will never use a secondary dominant, modulation, augmented chords, or modal mixture.
The weakness to her songs so far has been her strict adherence to the schlager genre, but it's the absolute beginning of her career and she is a teenager when writing these songs. Let's see how she develops.
Agnetha Faltskog Vol 2
The last two songs by Agnetha are nestled in at the end of the track listing, even though Zigenarvan was one of the singles. Perhaps this is because of her fiance at the time, Dieter Zimmerman. He wrote a number of the songs on this album and tried to "launch her career in German-speaking countries." She luckily dumped him later, but this is a weak album in her career.
1. Zigenarvän (with a writing credit to B. Haslum)
Questionable taste in lyrics aside, this song shows Agnetha is, in fact, capable of writing beyond the schlager genre. The upbeat song, with its wailing violin, minor-key verses, and oompah bass line, is clearly an adaptation of Romani folk songs. She avoids falling into pure pastiche with her chorus, which is pure Agnetha, all cheesy Swedish/German influence. Perhaps a little too bright and cheery considering the more intriguing mood of the verses.
2. Tag min hand låt oss bli vänner
An upbeat track with horns - we'll hear this again, in a more morose fashion, on "Kungens Vaktparad" in "Nar en vacker tanke blir en sang."
If this album is otherwise forgettable, the two tracks by Agnetha show her stretching outside of her comfort zone of writing schlagers and ballads. No waltz time tracks is she writing here!
Som Jag är (1970)
Another one where she only contributed two songs.
1. Om tårar vore guld
Oh? You thought we were done with the schmaltz? No, it's back with a vengeance. There's no real forward progression here - we have a descending line cliche in the chorus, and a sprinkle of secondary dominants to up the ante (E7 -> Am, A -> Dm, D, -> G) - nothing we haven't seen before. It is a pretty enough melody, though the theme of divorce doesn't match well with the melody, which suggests more the agony of teenage heartbreak than the self-annihilation of divorce. But, quibbles - it's a song about heartbreak where the melody ratchets up the ante where we need it to, and Agnetha competently keeps the tension going.
2. Jag ska göra allt
Yes, she's trying her hand at jangle pop. It's not really 'rock'. She never does rock, even though she's well-suited enough to it as her vocals on ABBA's "Hole in Your Soul" show. But her taste unabashedly leans to the sentimental, and I can't fault her for chasing what seems authentic and interesting to her.
Diversion aside, this gentle diversion has a surprisingly flat and repetitive melody compared to what we've come to expect from Agnetha.
När en vacker tanke blir en sång
Now she really puts the pedal to the medal and gets to writing music. Most of the music on here was written by her. It's also probably the most stylistically diverse she'll get - soft pop, marches, schlagers. Elva Kvinnor is more harmonically inventive and mature, but sticks to a single genre of adult contemporary for the most part.
1. Många gånger än (Agnetha Fältskog; Peter Himmelstand) (she wrote music)
Try getting this sticky, syncopated melody out of your head! Thank goodness she got over whatever overcame her when writing "jag ska gora allt".
2. Jag vill att du skall bli lycklig (Agnetha Fältskog)
This schlager forms a pair with "Han lamnar mig for att komma till dig". Both are about a boyfriend who leaves the singer for someone else.
The chord progression is nothing special, but it does have this 3/4 piano arpeggio that she's a real fan of.
3. Kungens vaktparad (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bjorn Ulvaeus) (she wrote music and lyrics, he wrote lyrics)
The last of her marches, and my personal favorite. The song is in Bm in the verses before switching to B major in the chorus. The melody line in the chorus is quite high, even for her, and she has to sing in octaves to give some support to the airy upper line. And for the final chorus, she takes it up a whole step to C#! Did she need to go that high? Did she feel like showing off? I suppose we'd all be this overjoyed to witness the King's parade.
4. Nya Ord (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
The 60s aesthetic is very powerful on this track about finding new love after a breakup.
Nothing especially unusual on this track. Typical secondary dominants. One interesting aspect is this:
D D7/C Gm(7) För ingenting är nytt under solen
The base of this progression I -> I7 (V/IV) -> IV, is common, but she does two things to spice it up. The IV becomes minor (Gm), and I swear it may actually just be a Bb dim and not a Gm? If I'm hearing it right, then it's like a secondary dominant to a minor, and then the minor is actually its diminished equivalent. Fun!
5. Jag ska inte fälla några tårar (Agnetha Fältskog)
The key changes a fair amount in this one. We start in the key of G, alternating between a G and Gsus 4 chord before moving to the minor v. The flatted 7 (F) is emphasized in the descending piano scale, ending in a modulation to C. I'm not quite sure how to analyze the Dm chord - a borrowing from G Mixolydian, which happens to have the same notes as C major? Whatever it is, it adds an unexpectedly somber note to a bubbly intro.
We have a descending bassline (C, B, A, G, F) that then turns up into G. We have an E next, and though its bass note is a 3rd below, it does have a G# (voice leading!). This secondary dominant leads into Am, but instead of returning to something in the key of C, this Am is interpreted as the ii of G. The Cm reinforces this as the iv of G, and the remaining chord progression (I - iii - IV - V) is conventional.
Intro: G - Gsus4 - G - Dm/F C G/B Am Em/G Jag skall inte fälla några tårar nar du gårF G E E7 Inte heller be dig stanna kvar Am Cm Jag ska nog bli kar igen G Bm Det finns sa manga andra män C D G Tack anda for allt som var.
G C D G Säkert blir det tömt efter dej Bm Em A D Far nog ganska svart att vanja mej B7 Em Sant du glömde kvar C Cm Säker som man spar G D G Dom minner om allt det som var.
6. Då finns du hos mig (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
One of the weirder songs here. The chord progression is unusual, as is the structure (ABCDBC).7. Han lämnar mig för att komma till dig (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bjorn Ulvaeus) (she wrote music and lyrics, he wrote lyrics)
One of her most syrupy schlagers.
8. Kanske var min kind lite het (Agnetha Fältskog)
TODO
9. Sången föder dig tillbaka (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bjorn Carlsson) (she wrote music)
TODO
10. Tågen kan gå igen (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
Elva kvinnor i ett hus
Her best album and the peak of her songwriting capabilities. The most experimental she will ever get, and a tantalizing glimpse at a musical identity that unfortunately never developed further. This is her at her most mature - if some of her songs in past albums still felt somewhat childlike in arrangement or mood, Elva Kvinnor instead aims squarely at the grown-up music consumer. The lyrics are more provocative than ever before, with mentions of age gap relationships, alcoholism, God, pregnancy, and (gasp) sex with men. Indeed, the title - "Eleven Women in One House" - subtly shows this pivot. This is music about the lives of women, not lovestruck girls.
The burgeoning stylistic diversity of Nar En Vacker... has been jettisoned in favor of a singular vision. The production is lovely on this album, and it feels much more international and cosmopolitan despite being recorded solely in Swedish with no (known) plans for English release.
If there's a misstep, it is ironically the inclusion of "SOS", a song written by ABBA for ABBA with ABBA's production style. The lyrics by Stig are lazy and vague, failing to match the specificity of the 10 other vignettes in the album. But can we blame a record label for wanting to capitalize on the success of ABBA and trying to get in some cross-promotion? (Yes.) Thankfully with modern technology, we can skip SOS and focus on the rest of the album. Pretend it's a bonus track for all you ABBA-lovers that was inexplicably stuck on to the beginning of the album instead of the end.
1. En egen trädgård (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
2. Tack för en underbar, vanlig dag (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
3. Gulleplutt (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
4. Är du som han (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
5. Och han väntar på mej (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
6. Doktorn (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
7. Mina ögon (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
This song is noticeably "Disillusion" from "Ring Ring"
8. Dom har glömt (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
9. Var det med dej (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
10. Visa i åttonde månaden (Agnetha Fältskog ; Bosse Carlgren) (she wrote music)
TODO
Tio ar med Agnetha (1979)
The recordings of Elva Kvinnor... were famously so involved that it nearly sank ABBA. For better or worse, ABBA survived and Agnetha's solo career languished. As a mother and a full-time singer, she clearly did not have the time or inclination to add yet another occupation to her already large list of duties. (She would later find a fascinating way to merge her twin callings of music and children by recording an album with her children, but those albums didn't feature her songwriting.) We are lucky, then, to get a handful of songs in 1979.
The first one was recorded for a greatest hits album "Tio ar med Agnetha", presumably to entice buyers.
1. Nar du tar mej i din famn
This song feels like an evolution from the Elva Kvinnor style. If the songs on Elva Kvinnor all had a sort of cool detachment to them, turning away from the unabashed romanticism that characterized her earlier work, "Nar Du Tar Mej" manages to merge these two veins successfully. It's a song about all-consuming passion that nevertheless feels adult. The production is lush with swirling strings and flutes, taunting the heartbroken yet lust-driven singer with television-esque flute trills and violin swells. It's not surprising she later decided to record this one in English - it's a very strong offering, bursting with catchy chord progressions without calling attention to themselves.
ABBA Tour (1979)
In an unusual turn of events, we have Agnetha debuting a new song during a tour for ABBA. It's not clear why - was she considering a solo career and dipping her feet back into songwriting? Did they need more songs for the setlist? The song was written after her divorce from Bjorn, the father of her children, yet unlike her older music, it doesn't dwell in sadness. Now, Bjorn wrote the lyrics, so maybe that's why. But a later version written with Swedish lyrics for Kicki Moberg also emphasizes the theme of survival with no mention of a romantic relationship, so I suspect that survival was on Agnetha's mind in some way.
1. I'm Still Alive
The old key change trick comes back here, with the verses in G and the chorus in C. Like "Nar Du Tar Mej...", this song shows a mature Agnetha who no longer needs to be detached from her music to show a mature sensibility. She effortlessly draws from her bag of tools to construct a complex feeling. The song is neither a glorious conquest of depression nor a wallowing in agony, but it dips between the two. It feels like the melody is at risk of falling - "I was a loser then... but I'm a winner now." The diminished chord between "loser then" and "but I'm..." suggests a moment of vulnerability - that despite the lyrics, she still feels weak, lost.
The chorus fights back against the moments of weakness. Interestingly, although she modulates to C, she doesn't actually state the tonic anywhere. Look at this progression:
F G But I'm still alive. Em A A/G My life is rolling on. Dm/F G Gently, from day to day, Em A A/G Memories will fade away. F G Yes, I'm still alive. Em A A/G The agony is gone. Dm/F G My mind is slowly waking, G#dim Am And my heart has ceased its aching.
The chord progression could repeat infinitely because there's no solid ending point. The F to G wants to resolve to C, but she gives us Em instead, and then her favorite secondary dominant of A7-> Dm. Ending on the A keeps the progression open, tense, unresolved - the stirring of the will to survive in the heart. The closest we get to a resolution is to the relative minor Am, which she then resolves to Cm, as the minor iv of G, to prepare for modulating back to G!
Can you tell I love this song? It is an utter shame we have no proper studio recording of it. For years, the only way to hear it at all was through underground mp3s and YouTube uploads of fan recordings of the concert. Fan recordings, so whatever recording technology the average person could get their hands on in 1979, uploaded to YouTube which compresses it by default! And then Polar would copyright strike the upload, despite there being no legal way to buy or even listen to the song! Finding any info on it at all was a struggle because Google search results for "ABBA I'm still alive" inevitably returned Super Trouper results ("the sight of you will make me feel I'm still alive"), and you had to play with the boolean operators (which worked back then) to filter those out.
And now we have the Wembley recording, finally, you can stream in Spotify for crying out loud, and... Agnetha sounds like she has a cold. There is something wrong with her voice on the whole album. It's still miles better than listening to a noisy downloaded-from-Youtube version that has fans cheering in it, but this song deserves better. Anyone wanting to hear a studio version of it will have to settle for the cover version by Kicki Moberg. Which is lovely, and the lyrics are arguably even better than the ABBA ones! But Kicki isn't Agnetha, and we're here for Agnetha, aren't we? Ah well, we're lucky to get this song at all. ABBA could have kept that one in the vaults forever, caught in an endless cat and mouse game of people uploading the song and having it copyright struck. It's one of Agnetha's best songs, right up there with "Nar Du Tar Mej" and the best of Elva Kvinnor.
Melodifestivalen (1981)
She wrote this song for Kicki Möberg (who also ended up recording a Swedish version of "I'm Still Alive"). She was seriously considering a solo career by this point, and perhaps a job as a songwriter for other artists. There's no known version of this song being recorded by Agnetha, so let's take a look at the Kicki version.
1. Men Natten Ar Var
Wrap Your Arms Around Me (1983)
Back to one song.
1. Man
Mmmmm, the 80s. How is it she was recording these gorgeous love tracks just a few years ago and now we have this cheap-sounding production? And featuring one of her weakest hooks since 1970. Gone also are the tension-building devices she used so effortlessly to make each song a mini-journey.
Eyes of a Woman (1985)
1. I Won't Let You Go (Agnetha Fältskog ; Eric Stewart) (she wrote music)
We're back to soaring choruses here, thankfully. Nevertheless, it still feels like a downgrade from her 70s material. Calling it "selling out" would be wrong, since Agnetha has never been anything but straightforwardly commercial and mainstream. Maybe a better way to put it is that it feels like she's denying some of her compositional instincts, some of her quirkiness, her off-kilter melodies. It's a big improvement from "Man", but it feels like we lost something. At least she felt confident enough in this one that it's the lead single from the album.
2. You're There (2005 remastered bonus track)
The B-side to "I Won't Let You Go." In the chorus, we get some of the 'old' Agnetha here. The melancholy is back, the emotionally ambiguous chords, but it's let down by mid production and a mid melody.
I Stand Alone (1987)
No self-penned songs here, and the final album of her 80s solo career. It's a sad ending for someone who clearly had a love for not just singing, but songwriting. She stepped out of the limelight after this album, faced a series of horrific personal struggles, and lived her life quietly. The end. Well, or so it seemed. As of writing (2023), there's one more Agnetha song to take a look at.
A/A+ (2013)
1. I Keep Them on the Floor Beside My Bed
I did not know the difference between the A and A+ versions of the album. I figured that the A+ would simply be the deluxe version with extra tracks, right? So that's the first version of this song that I listened to.
Have you ever wanted to hear Agnetha's music with painfully modern production, including an electronic riff that feels straight out of tropical house, a weird filter on the verses, a saxophone, and a cheap lo-fi 'hip-hop beats to study and relax to' percussion? Well, this album delivers this in the last song Agnetha wrote. It's an awkward fit compared to a song that hearkens back to her older material and style. It's not her strongest melody, but there's something compelling about it, and about that weird little break after "I keep them on the floor beside my bed."
It's ironic that this track, which shows her comfortably embracing her older harmonic tendencies, is paired with an uncomfortably modern arrangement melding random aspects of contemporary music. I sometimes suspect that older artists really want to show that their music deserves to be taken seriously and is relevant despite their age, and this is what leads them to experiment with musical styles they're clearly not familiar with. They don't know enough about the modern styles to have developed good taste for them, so anything modern sounds fresh and new and relevant. Props to Agnetha for trying something new, especially after such a long time of not composing, but already in the 80s we were seeing her struggle to keep her musical identity amidst changing trends, and I think this production shows that she is, at heart, a more 'classic' style of artist, at home with real instruments and performers, and not synthesizers programmed on a DAW or drum tracks.
When I found out that this is a remix of the original version, I was tremendously relieved. It is so much better with the "My Colouring Book"-style orchestration than with the uninspired faux-pop production. I'm sad she didn't write anything else for the album, but sometimes we only have a single song in us. With that, our examination of Agnetha's songwriting career comes to an end - a more positive one than I would have expected considering how most "whoa I'm coming out of retirement to write One Last Song" songs go.
What can we learn from the arc of her career? For one, if you intend to be a songwriter, you need to be doing it all the time. The more breaks she took between releases, the fewer songs she wrote, and over time it seems she lost her faith in her compositions. She arguably hit her peak with the 1979 duo of "Nar Du Tar Mej i Din Famn" and "I'm Still Alive", and her album peak was "Elva Kvinnor." After that, the songs slow down to a trickle, she settles into being an interpreter and not a creator.
It's hard to say why this happened. Songwriting requires a tremendous amount of emotional vulnerability, even if you're not writing lyrics. It also requires work - if you haven't written a song in years, getting back to the piano can feel intimidating. When I was writing a lot of songs, coming up with new ones felt effortless. After my hiatus, I had no idea how to start anymore - everything I wrote felt trite, cliche, or on the other hand overwritten and pretentious. It took a fair amount of futzing about for me to get back into a swing.
A lot of songwriters also lose the will to write after big emotional events - Clara Schumann stopped composing after the devastating death of her husband. Agnetha had been through a lot - she was part of this supergroup that took her away from her kids, she lost her mother to suicide, she was stalked, she got divorced (in no particular order). There is pain that leads to music and there is pain that stops the music. Combine this about her insecurity about her music compared to Bjorn and Benny's, and her decreasing popularity - perhaps she felt it was time to hang up her hat.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66616991
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/oct/13/abba-agnetha-faltskog-music-fame-voyage-icon