CD Magazine, 1988: Agnetha's recent CD 'I Stand Alone': new proof of her musicality

An article from a 1988 Dutch magazine, promoting the then fairly new CD format.
Agnetha Fältskog is fifteen years old when she performs for the first time with a band. Two years later, she records her first single: ‘I Was So Much In Love’ that immediately becomes her first top 10 hit. Due to that achievement, she becomes ‘Sweden’s big promise for the future’. Between 1968 and 1975 she holds that promise and she develops into a top vocalist with ABBA, a group that achieved worldwide fame.
No wonder, because one hundred million of the world’s pop-lovers bought ABBA’s hits, who have become pop-history for six years now.
But – to quote Wim Sonneveld – Agnetha couldn’t stop herself from singing and now she’s back with a new album ‘I Stand Alone’, for which she remarkably didn’t write any songs herself. About that, she says: “I set very high standards for the songs that I record and considering the short preparation time for this project, I chose other people’s songs instead of my own compositions that weren’t satisfactory yet. Apart from that, these songs strongly caught my imagination.”
This new album, produced in collaboration with Peter Cetera, an ABBA-fan who has always wanted to record something together with her, is characteristic for Cetera’s style and Agnetha’s own way of singing. Both styles are highly compatible and have undoubtedly led to a qualitative high levelled pop achievement by the charming blonde Agnetha, who after twenty successful years is far removed from leaving the pop stage.

Something that’s probably not widely known about Agnetha is that in the meantime she has recorded about eleven solo albums through the years. This new offering ‘I Stand Alone’ is her third solo project after ABBA disbanded. Apart from that, it’s her second project for WEA. And WEA thinks that all efforts have been made to turn it into a success; top producer Peter Cetera, ex-Chicago and in the meantime a successful solo artist; David Foster’s most convenient recording studio in Malibu, and a string of composers such as Albert Hammond, Peter Brown and the duo Cetera/Gaitsch. The first single has just been released and is called ‘The Last Time’.

ABBA’s definitive breakthrough came in 1974 with ‘Waterloo’, the winning song of the Eurovision Song Contest, that started the ABBA-era for Agnetha, Frida, Björn and Benny. The subsequent string of high quality hit-singles turned the group into one of Sweden’s most successful ambassadors of pop-music. Agnetha has continued on that path, also after ABBA split up, with: in 1983 – ten years after her first solo album – ‘Wrap Your Arms Around Me’; in 1985 the album ‘Eyes Of A Woman’ and in 1987 a Swedish-language album with children’s songs that she recorded together with her son Christian. And now ‘I Stand Alone’, that is a proof of Agnetha’s musicality and success, as a solo artist as well.