Agnetha Faltskog became a superstar with ‘ABBA’ – better sit down before you see her today, age 73

Debut single at age 17

She got home late, “around 2 or 3 at night”, and was expected to be at work just hours later. One day she even passed out at the car firm, and her mother gave her an ultimatum.

“‘Either you work as a normal person or you dedicate fully to singing’,” Agnetha recalled her mother saying. “It wasn’t a tough choice, I wanted to keep singing.”

Agnetha continued singing with the Bernt Enghardt band for two years, before then branching off to start a solo career. It was when she released her first solo album that she decided to add an “h” to her surname.

At the age of 17, Faltskog’s debut single Jag var så kär [I Was So In Love] was released. It quickly rose to No. 1 on the Swedish sales chart in 1968 – and soon after a guy named Bjorn Ulvaeus heard her song on the radio.

“I remember hearing Agnetha’s first single on the radio. There was something so special about her voice and the fact that she had written that song herself  – it was magic,” Benny said in the BBC documentary Agnetha: Abba and After.

Benny Andersson added: “She did a couple sort of back to back, both good songs. She did some good stuff, you know, singing in harmony with herself.”

Transformation to ABBA

Now, Bjorn and Benny happened to be talented musicians and had worked together before. Agnetha’s career sky-rocketed following her first single, and before long, she was set to perform with Bjorn Ulvaeus.

“We did a TV show together and she and I had a duet together. That was a magical moment,” he recalled. “That evening was when it actually happened, we fell in love and then shortly after that we were a couple.”

At the same time as Agnetha and Bjorn performed together, Benny fell in love with another singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

Now, they were four very talented musicians in the same room – but they weren’t thinking of starting a band together initially. Then, Anni-Frid and Agnetha featured as background singers on the 1970 Bjorn and Benny album Lycka [Happiness].

The four soon started to work together. In 1972, they recorded the song People Need Love, but it only achieved minor success in Sweden. At this point, the group styled themselves Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid. They decided to compete in Melodifestivalen, the Swedish qualification competition for the Eurovision Song Contest, and performed the song Ring, Ring. They finished third, but the song became a really big hit in Sweden.