ABBA On The Web - June 2004
With the focus firmly on Agnetha at the moment following the release of her new album ‘My Colouring Book’, it seems like a good time to pay a visit to a few websites focused on Agnetha.
The first is one of the newest sites, and is already a firm favourite – The Agnetha Fältskog Archive, created by Claes in the USA.
Claes is originally from Sweden, and collected a huge amount of articles about Agnetha from Swedish newspapers and magazines during the 80s as ABBA came to an end and Agnetha resumed her solo career.
In The Agnetha Fältskog Archives you’ll find many of those original articles from 1983 up to 1987, plus a few recent articles about Agnetha’s comeback. All have English translations done by Claes himself. Unlike many of her interviews in English, when interviewed in Swedish Agnetha could be quite insightful and even candid. It’s a treat for those of us who don’t know Swedish to be able to read these articles, many for the first time.
There is also a comprehensive photo gallery section, with many rare and not often seen photos of Agnetha over the years, and a range of Swedish magazine covers.
It’s pretty easy to navigate, with links to each page listed on the left.
Another favourite site is Agnetha – Then and Now, by Pam in the USA.
I’ve mentioned this site in a previous column, but since then the site has changed its focus, and now primarily chronicles Agnetha’s life through photographs.
Agnetha – Then and Now is a huge gallery site with dozens of rare and unique photos of Agnetha ranging from childhood right up to today, accompanied by brief biographical data putting the photos into context. You can spend hours making your way through this site.
This site’s not quite so easy to navigate, with links to the next page at the bottom of each page, but links to the rest of the site only at the top, and being graphic heavy, it can take some time for pages to download. Still, it’s well worth the wait.
The last site we’ll look at is the official Agnetha site, created by Warner Music Sweden to promote the new album ‘My Colouring Book’.
As far as official record company promotional sites go, this is not too bad. The concept is rather cute – Agnetha’s colouring book is laid out on a table, with pots of colours and a few crayons.
Clicking on the pots flips the pages of the book (though you can turn off the page flipping if you prefer). Here you’ll find the latest news and press releases about Agnetha’s comeback, a biography in English, Swedish, German and Spanish that includes comments from Agnetha herself, lyrics and sound samples of all the songs on the album, a small picture gallery of Agnetha’s latest photo sessions, wallpapers, an e-card to send to friends, and more. There’s even a small sample of a “radio edit” remix of the first single from the album, ‘If I Thought You’d Ever Change Your Mind’, that has not yet been made available on CD.
You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive all the latest news, though the news bulletins seem to have dried up since the CD was actually released. You can also leave feedback, and occasionally some of the feedback is added to the site.
You’ll need Macromedia Flash to view this site. One complaint is that there is no non-Flash version of the site.
I was thrilled to see that my own site was one of the few fan sites selected for inclusion on the links page. Coincidentally, the other two are the sites featured in this very article!
