gnetha Fältskog’s recent single, Where Do We Go From Here?, came with an animated video. It depicted the cartoonish version of thesinger that is permanently burned into the collective memory: blond hair, blue eyeshadow, clad in hot pants and platform boots. It was a look deemed so striking in the 1970s that it occasionally threatened to overshadow Abba’s music entirely.
So the Triumph Spitfire-driving Fältskog was young, successful and famous, but she says today that if she could go back and give her advice, it would be “don’t be so worried all the time. Try to relax and have fun. You know, I was a little worried person about everything, so that’s the advice I would give her: try to have fun and enjoy yourself.”Is she different now? She laughs. “No, I’m the same. I think a lot. When I do things, I worry a lot for many days before.
Fältskog signing autographs, stood next to her then-husband Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad of Abba, in Warsaw, 1976.She didn’t like flying or spending time away from her children and understandably tired of the focus on her appearance . Today, she is stunned at the band’s workload back then and seems impressed by contemporary young artists who cancel tours and clear their schedules to concentrate on their health and wellbeing.
Meanwhile, all attempts to lure Abba into reforming, one of them involving an offer of $1bn to tour, were turned down. The groundbreaking virtual Abba Voyage project, she laughs, is a dream come true for an artist not fond of live performance: “I’m at home in my bed, and at the same time in London. It’s very cleverly done, isn’t it?” Even so, she wasn’t particularly taken with the idea at first.
Fältskog laughs a lot, at odds with a latter-day image that more than one journalist has rather ham-fistedly characterised as “the Greta Garbo of pop”. Her predisposition to worry notwithstanding, she is, she says, very happy with her life today. “If I have a lot of makeup on or if I’m dressed very nicely, more people recognise me, but in everyday life, it’s not so bad,” she says.