Agnetha Faltskog became a superstar with ‘ABBA’ – better sit down before you see her today, age 72 –

A song about two little “trolls” was written by Faltskog when she was only five years old. She began taking formal piano lessons when she was eight years old and would frequently go to her neighbor’s home to practice. She performed in the local church choir as well.

With her two childhood friends, Faltskog started the band The Cambers in 1960 when she was just 13 years old. They only performed a few small shows in the neighborhood before she decided it was time for something else two years later.

Agneta became a member of the Swedish folk band Bernt Enghardt. Swedish dance music was played as the band made its way around Sweden.

“They had a singer named Agneta before me that quit,” Agnetha recalled. “They had printed posters looking for a new singer, and when they found me and after I auditioned, it was a big plus that I was named Agnetha as well.”

Faltskog was on tour with Bernt Enghardt while also working as a telephonist for a car company, but her circumstances weren’t ideal.

She arrived home after midnight, “around two or three,” and was scheduled to report to work shortly afterward. She even passed out at the car company one day, and her mother gave her a choice.

“‘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.”

Before departing to launch a solo career, Agnetha sang with the Bernt Enghardt band for another two years. She made the decision to change her last name to include a “h” after releasing her debut solo album.

Faltskog’s first single, Jag var s kär [I Was So In Love], was made public when he was just 17 years old. As soon as it reached No. 1 on the Swedish sales chart in 1968, a man by the name of Bjorn Ulvaeus heard it 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.”

Now, Bjorn and Benny were gifted musicians who had previously collaborated. Following the release of her debut single, Agnetha’s career took off, and soon she was scheduled to perform alongside 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.”

While Agnetha and Bjorn were performing together, Benny fell in love with Anni-Frid Lyngstad, another performer.

Despite being four extremely talented musicians in the same space, they initially had no plans to form a band. The 1970 Bjorn and Benny album Lycka [Happiness] featured Anni-Frid and Agnetha as background singers.

Ring, Ring gained popularity in a number of European nations where it persisted. The group was starting to gain recognition everywhere at this point. They would achieve their goals one year later, in 1974.