The inclusion of this song in our advent calendar was a given. A Swedish classic by anyone’s standards. Despite its age, it was still in the top 20 most played Swedish Christmas songs of the last decade, according to STIM.
What wasn’t so certain however, was which version to include. There are quite a few out there, but really it boils down to two recordings in particular. One by Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and one by Agnetha Fältskog. So it’s that age old debate of Agnetha vs Frida – aaarrrgggh!
We temporarily thought that this could be remedied and sorted quite easily, when we discovered that someone had done a mash-up of the two versions, and uploaded it to youtube. But then we listened to it and it just sounded rubbish. So it was back to Agnetha vs Frida again. Although really, when it got down to it, it was more or less a no-brainer. Both versions have their own beauty to them, but it’s Frida’s recording that’s got that extra special feeling to it. It’s a lot prettier, and it just sounds better. It sounds so so right. So that’s the version we’ve included. You can heard Agnetha’s song here, and the not-quite-right mash-up here.
Interesting (not really) fact – a friend of ours who is even more into Abba than most people, once sat down and listened to every Abba song ever recorded and released, in a specific attempt to research the lead vocals. He wanted to find out which of the two girls, in the end, ‘When All Is Said And Done’, got the most lead solo vocals in Abba’s song history. Omitting the songs where they share lead vocals, he calculated that it was in fact Frida who got the most leads – albeit by a ONE SONG majority! Nail biting stuff!
