AGNETHA @ "THE GUARDIAN"

El periódico inglés "The Guardian" también dedicó un artículo a Agnetha, la semana pasada. Aquí en inglés.

British newspaper "The Guardian" also devoted an article to Agnetha kast week. Here it is.

Abba's Agnetha Fältskog returns – and unravels the mystery of her silence

Like David Bowie and Kate Bush, Fältskog has attained almost mystical status through her extended absence, but the Swedish singer is now exploding the myths that have formed around her

Agnetha Fältskog has one of the all-time great pop voices: crystal clear, delicate and equally at home channelling the euphoric disco and sublime heartbreak that became Abba's stock-in trade throughout their extraordinary heyday. Hardly suprising, then, that news of her first new album release in nine years – and her first of original material since 1987 – has caused something of a media frenzy.

Like her fellow recently reactivated pop icon David Bowie, the fascination that Fältskog still commands is as much to do with narrative as nostalgia. The shy Swedish beauty with the knockout voice, married to one of her bandmates and forced to sing a series of gut-wrenchingly personal songs about their subsequent divorce in front of an audience of millions ... before being driven to paranoia and seclusion when the group finally imploded. As the ultimate expression of pop as soap opera, only Fleetwood Mac comes close.

The problem with this image of Fältskog as one of the music industry's archetypally tragic victims is that it isn't really accurate. True, she has kept a low profile since the Abba days, but in a recent interview she expressed frustration at the perception that she is some kind of isolated Greta Garbo figure.

"I have been described as very mysterious, but I'm not," she said, "I think I'm just very grounded. My life contains so many other things; I have my children, my grandchildren, my two dogs, and a big place in the country. I have my own life."

Even her move away from regular recording happened much more gradually than many assume. She released three English-language solo albums in the 80s to moderate success, but never quite found the material to match the incredible songs written for her by Benny and Björn. In the UK, her sole top 40 hit of that decade was a ghastly reggae-tinged number called The Heat Is On. She fared better on the mainland with the bouncy synth-pop hit I Won't Let You Go and seductive balladWrap Your Arms Around Me – widely considered by hardcore fans to be one of her most underrated recordings.

However, like many pop stars approaching middle age, she found her record sales rapidly diminishing, and her own interest in the promotional carousel waning. Footage of her being forced to dance alongside a 6ft kangaroo on a German children's TV show in 1985 suggests her decision to retreat from the limelight was eminently sensible rather than perverse.

Another reason for her near-silence over the last 25 years is her terror of flying (owing to a traumatic experience while touring the US with Abba in 1979, which saw her plane make an emergency landing after flying into the middle of a tornado). She travelled almost exclusively overground during the 80s, and did no international promotion for her 2004 comeback album, My Colouring Book – a collection of standards that still managed to yield her biggest solo hit to date in the UK, a tender reworking of Cilla Black's If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind.

Her long absence from public view may be down to more mundane reasons than commonly reported, but as with Bowie and Kate Bush, it has still proven to be a far more effective promotional tool than a lifetime spent touring the international chatshow circuit. The compelling domestic drama that spawned Abba's biggest hits, combined with their steadfast refusal to get back together, has resulted in the singer attaining an almost mystical quality, her few public appearances the subject of breathless rumour and anticipation.

Suggestions that she was finally ready to launch a comeback first circulated late last year, with reports that she was in the studio with producer Jörgen Elofsson – who has written hits for Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson and Leona Lewis. The first fruits of this collaboration were released this week, as the lead single When You Really Loved Someone was premiered. It's a classic pop ballad that could easily pass for a hit by an artist such as Lewis, but is given extra gravitas by Fältskog's more mature yet still remarkably pure voice. It's not likely to join The Winner Takes It All and SOS in the annals of the all-time greats, but it's a creditable, dignified return.

By all accounts, her forthcoming album, A, due for release on 13 May, will continue to stick close to the clean-cut pop sound that made her name. The prospect of a duet with Gary Barlow may send a chill down the spine, but there's also the promise of the "rousing disco number" Dance Your Pain Away, and a rare self-penned closer, the quirkily titled I Keep Them on the Floor Beside My Bed. One presumes the latter will be some sort of metaphor for distant memories, rather than discarded knickers. But from the woman whose former band mined pop gold from the subject of – among other things – the fall of Napoleon, the revitalising power of stage lighting in Glasgow and political agitation in the Soviet Union, you can never really take anything for granted.