Any Abba biog will inform you that the world’s greatest-ever pop group actually sprang from the Scandinavian folk scene, where all four members were already recording artists of some success.
That “My Colouring Book”, blonde recluse Agnetha Fältskog’s first solo album in over fifteen years, comprises covers of her favourite pre-Abba songs might, then, strike fear into the hearts of the 'Mamma Mia' masses, but a pleasant surprise awaits one and all.
Thanking everyone from Doris Day and Cilla Black to Simon & Garfunkel, Demis Roussos, The Beach Boys, Cliff Richards and Bing Crosby on the sleeve, “My Colouring Book” is a collection of well-known and obscure ballads that romanticizes heartbreak in the way only the Swedish can.
Of course, the skill in choosing such songs is in telling your story without having written a word of it. Anyone who had hoped Agnetha had busied herself with pottery and found fulfilment setting up an animal sanctuary, perhaps, will be disappointed. The last two decades have apparently been full of lost and impossible love… could anything be more romantic, in pop terms? Mais non.
Opener “My Colouring Book”, previously recorded by Andy Williams, Barbra, Cliff, Dusty, Brenda Lee and Aretha – how’s that for credentials? – could have been purpose-written for the project: “For those who fancy colouring books/And lots of people do/Here’s a new one for you…” It’s followed immediately by the album’s stand-out moment, “When You Walk In The Room” (one of The Searchers’ many hit Jackie DeShannon covers), rendered in an enormously satisfying Phil Spector style.
Thereafter, the first of two Cilla covers, a Beatles-y “If I Thought You’d Ever Change Your Mind”, immeasurably improved simply through not being sung by the Scouse foghorn. “Sealed With A Kiss” is next, with a bewitching, Ry Cooder-tumbleweedy treatment that erodes all remembrance of Jason Donovan, then the straight 60s crooning of Petula Clark’s “Love Me With All Your Heart” before “Fly Me To The Moon”, which remains a slinky cabaret classic.
The Shangri-Las’ “Past, Present And Future” is the first oddity, a spookily spoken-word affair that seems to storybook Agnetha’s well-publicised stalker troubles (“Take a walk along the beach tonight?/I’d love to/But don’t try to touch me…”). “A Fool Am I” is a belter in the Dusty Springfield mould; “I Can’t Reach Your Heart” a piano-led song from a long-lost musical.
Elsewhere, “Sometimes When I’m Dreaming”, replenishes the quirky quotient with its refrain of “I wake up screaming/Sometimes when I’m dreaming”, before the second Cilla track, “The End Of The World” is successfully reclaimed as a shuffling Motown number.
The penultimate track, the little-known “Remember Me”, could easily be an Abba outtake, before “What Now My Love”, the Shirley Bassey showtune par excellence, closes proceedings with a bizarre yet effective “Where The Streets Have No Name” production job.
In short, “My Colouring Book” is a peerless resurrection of a pop princess, to whom the modern-day equivalents cannot compare; she can sing, for starters – that wonderful, familiar soprano is high and clear in the mix throughout, and age has not wearied it. Oh, and she looks gorgeous on the sleeve, in that middle-aged, Joanna Lumley, better-than-ever way that makes mere mortals weep over their shallow gene pools and misspent years of sunbathing.
Would that all icons had the good grace to wait until they had an album of such quality to relaunch themselves – once again, Agnetha Fältskog has set the gold standard of pop.
