Anni-Frid Lyngstad, ABBA’s brunette, has recorded her second solo album, ‘Shine’. It’s very different from the first one and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that that one was produced by Phil Collins and this one by Steve Lillywhite. The latter already has an impressive string of productions credited to his name, with artists such as U2, Simple Minds, Ultravox, Peter Gabriel and Siouxsie & The Banshees. Lillywhite’s influence is clearly audible and sees to it that this record doesn’t remind one of the first album at all and much less of ABBA, except for the one song that Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus contributed to this album.‘Shine’ is a bad album, despite all the efforts that have been made on the production and the hard work in the studio. It turns out that Frida doesn’t have enough vocal personality to take on a project like this. It takes more to do a solo album than participating in a group.
On the other hand, the press release that accompanies the album does offer some interesting information. It says (for those who didn’t know already) that Anni-Frid was born in 1945 from a relationship between a Norwegian woman and an officer from the German occupying force. When the war ended, her father returned to Germany and her mother died in the confinement bed, whereupon her grandmother moved to Sweden with her. You can wonder whether this had anything to do with the fact that her background was rather controversial in Norway, right after the war. This made Anni-Frid one of the many people whose life was scarred by the tragedy of World War II. It didn’t stop her from building a career as a singer at a very young age. A career that apparently has had its peak.
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