BBC interview on 11/03/2013

AF  Agnetha Fältskog

"I have been described as a very mysterious human being and that hurts a little bit, because it's not like that at all," she says.

Agnetha Faltskog says she had totally fallen out of the practice of singing since her Abba days
On the phone from Stockholm, she is neither awkward nor reticent, although she chooses her words
carefully, sometimes with the aid of an interpreter.
Laughter peppers the conversation, and she denies any suggestion she's a hermit.

"I'm very earth-grounded and very normal," she says. "I just like to stay at home."

Fate came to her house 18 months ago, when Swedish producer Jorgen Elofsson rang the doorbell, hoping to to play Faltskog

three songs he had written for her.
An internationally successful composer, his credits include Britney Spears' Crazy and Kelly Clarkson's Stronger

(What Doesn't Kill You). His dream was to coax Faltskog out of a nine-year hiatus and back into the studio.

"It was flattering," says the singer. "It really was."
"I just couldn't say 'no'. I really loved the songs from the beginning."

But before Faltskog would enter the studio, she had some conditions.

"I told him, 'we have to talk about a lot of things first,'" she recalls.
"It was nine or 10 years since I'd sung, so I didn't know if [my voice] worked."
"I said from the beginning, 'if it sounds old I don't want to do this, because... Why should I?'"

"When you love someone, and you've lost that one, then nothing really matters,"
sighs Faltskog on the first single, When You Really Love Someone.

On the closing track, the singer scatters photos of an old lover across her bedroom floor and wonders what happened to their relationship.
Ripe with bittersweet emotion, the song is her sole contribution as a composer.

You wonder why she didn't write more.Faltskog says she simply fell out of practice.

"During the Abba years the boys were writing nearly all the material and I didn't have any time.
They asked me a lot - but when we were at home, I just wanted to be with my children.
"For this album, we had an idea that maybe I should try to write one song. I didn't want to do more.
I'm not that composer that composes every day. But it was very exciting to see if it still worked - and it did!"
The album doesn't reinvent the pop wheel, but is tasteful and sumptuous, rarely raising its tempo above "mid".

One exception is Dance Your Pain Away, where disco strings stab at a gymnastic bassline, apparently summoned
from the dusty off-cuts of Abba's Voulez Vous.
Another stand-out is I Should Have Followed You Home, where Faltskog trades lines with Gary Barlow.

She hopes to meet Barlow on a forthcoming promotional trip to the UK, but says there are currently "no plans"
for them to perform the song together live.

Faltskog's trip to the UK may come as a surprise to some seasoned Abba-watchers. During the band's heyday,
she had a rule that she would never leave home for more than two weeks at a time, so she wouldn't be separated
from her children (both born in the midst of Abbamania).
A nervous flyer, she arranged to travel separately from Ulvaeus for the sake of the children, in case anything should happen

to either of them in mid-air.

Agnetha Faltskog says an Abba reunion is unlikely ever to happen
Then, towards the end of Abba's 1979 US tour, the band had a quick turnaround between gigs in New York and Boston.
Faltskog boarded a chartered jet, which previously belonged to millionaire aviator Howard Hughes, and flew straight
into the middle of a tornado which forced Boston's airfield to close.

Running out of fuel, in a pitch black sky, the pilot performed an emergency landing in Manchester, New Hampshire.
The first attempt was aborted at the last minute, pulling up just before the wheels hit the runway. Fortunately,
the plane touched down on the second try.
Since then, she has largely avoided flying - even coming to the UK "by bus once" for a promotional trip.

"But nowadays I have started to fly again," she says. "I have gone to a man - a therapist - who taught me to
think in another way, a very positive way. It works. It helps, at least."

The 62-year-old says she's looking forward to coming back to the UK, and speaks fondly of Abba's seven-day
residency in London's Wembley Arena in 1979.

"People's reaction was fantastic on Dancing Queen," she says. "And otherwise, it was very nice with Thank You For The Music."

She enjoys the memories of Abba, and has donated costumes and memorabilia to the Abba Museum which will open
in Sweden in May ("it is very strange to have a museum in your honour!"), but cannot see the band reforming.