Solo albums 1980s. Do you listen to them now?

I listen to the Shine album quite often. Start to finish, no skips.  I really love it. I think the title track sounds fresh enough today and, although I'm sure they haven't listened to it, I can hear some of its sound/influence in bands like Two Door Cinema Club and Temper Trap. Twist In The Dark is a tour de force. I'm not mad about Chemistry Tonight, but I tend not to skip it. 

I listen to Something's Going On occasionally, sometimes I skip a track or two. I still rate IKTSGO and Tell Me It's Over. And YKWIM is still beautiful. I have even grown fond of Here We'll Stay. 

My favourite Agnetha album has always been Wrap Your Arms Around Me and I still play it occasionally. I tend to skip The Heat Is On and I Wish Tonight Would Last For Ever, but I love the title track, Can't Shake Loose, Mr. Persuasion and, best of all, Man. It's lovely.

I never play Eyes Of A Woman. I have never managed to like the album. I still like and play I Keep Turning Off Lights and, to a lesser extent, The Angels Cry. 

I haven't played I Stand Alone from start to finish in years. I love the title track, The Last Time and Maybe It Was Magic (I think it could have been a big hit in the States). They get the odd spin if I'm in the mood. But the rest of it leaves me cold, I'm afraid. 

I simply can't listen to either of Benny's 80s solo albums. 

Chess remains a favourite and it's a treat to play it in its glorious entirety.

I completely agree. A hell of a lot of 1980s music sounds older/tinnier etc than 1970s music and even quite a lot of 1960s stuff, to the point of being virtually unlistenable. It's different with movies, though - there's nothing so dated as a late 1960s film (especially with one of those obligatory 'party' scenes). They somehow feel 'older' and less familiar than stuff produced in the 1950s and even the 1940s and 1930s. Strange but true.

Ooooh, them's fightin' words, Josef! I love the '80s. For me, the period 1980 to 1986 was a golden era. Music was diverse, fashion was too. Yes, there were tribes and fads, but there was a place for the individual and the freak which was new and, despite everything, has not really continued. Pop came from a much wider palette than before and so much of it influences modern pop. (I must post on the favourite music thread elsewhere to illustrate my point a bit).

Musical nostalgia seems to pick up things from 20 years before. In the 1980s, there was a big rediscovery of 1960s music and the stylings and arrangements were borrowed/updated/repurposed. In the 1990s, there was a revival of 1970s music and style (although, stylistically, I think the 1970s was an ugly decade. An entirely personal view, of course).  The 70s has a definite sound and style when it comes to music: intricate chord structures, shifting time signatures. Then came the noughties and, right on cue, came the 80s revival. But it seems to have hung around a few years longer than expected. I reckon that's because it was a rich decade of new styles and ideas. The 90s revival is starting to edge in now but, for me, it was a dull period. Techno was tuneless, boybands from the era are virtually interchangeable, and then there was grunge. As for 90s fashion? Cargo pants, soul patches and ironed hair, anyone? It was a decade of beige.

I actually think the last 10-15 years has been another interesting pop era, a bit more diverse than the preceding years. 

Thank you for attending my TED Talk. 

I listen to the 80s solo albums (Agnetha, Frida and Benny's) perhaps once every few months. I like the first English-language album the best from both Frida and Agnetha. Benny's albums paved the way for BAO and I am probably more into that these days.

I’ve been thinking more about this and I wonder if it’s because most of those albums are quite impersonal?

Something’s Going On was perhaps Frida’s most personal album. She didn’t write any of it but that doesn’t matter. She’d apparently listened to Phil Collins’ Face Value album every day for months, and one of the songs on it (You Know What I Mean) she recorded for her album. Plus she got Phil himself as producer, apparently going against Stig’s wishes.

The result is a drum-heavy and dated album but with plenty of Frida in it. Tell Me It’s Over, the (sort of) title track, You Know What I Mean. All reflected her marriage break-up and Phil sympathised with her as the injured party. It means this album is still listenable today as you can still feel the pain that went into it. It may be a long time ago, but she went through this.

Shine and all three of Agnetha’s 80s albums, on the other hand, show an appalling lack of any personal qualities. I could quite believe that they would each have sang anything that was put in front of them as long as it suited their voices. Yes, both wrote the odd song but even those don’t really give us any glimpse at what was going on in their lives at the time.

We’d have to wait until My Colouring Book to get a personal English album from Agnetha (all cover versions but songs she had grown up with and therefore personal to her. Plus “Past, Present and Future” was so linked to the image we had of Agnetha at the time, they could easily have been her words).

So yes, a mix of dated production and a lack of sincerity makes the 80s albums (with the exception of Something’s Going On) a difficult and very dull listen.

For all that SGO supposedly addressed Frida's personal situation, it feels less Frida-ish than Shine.  That's my own view anyway. For me, Shine handles the same landscape with a bit more subtlety. Kirsty MacColl marvelled that nobody had spotted that the album was about abandonment. Even the upbeat and sparky title track includes a plea not to let the sun go down, with the love interest "walking away." From one angle, the final four songs even track the beginning and end of a rebound relationship. With a closer-knit writing team than 1982, and far less genre hopping, it feels more cohesive. The downside is that Frida's vocal range wasn't explored to the same extent. Even so, I find it a more satisfying album.  Her three Swedish albums are totally Frida, though.

What I especially like about WYAAM is that is mostly skipped that tear-sodden maudlin streak that seems to be the Agnetha stereotype. It covered so many parts of her personality and she was in fabulous vocal form. I Stand Alone was slick but the Wronged Woman theme was a teensy bit "Agnetha from Central Casting." It had a nice feel to it and it was interesting to see Agnetha through an American filter (I don't know if I'm making sense here). I think the singles were oddly chosen, though.

So, I love and listen to the whole of Something's Going On and Shine with the exception of Heart Of The Country, The Face and Chemistry Tonight. I especially love the themes that are present in both of those albums as pointed out earlier. I love the fact that nearly all of the songs were ahead of it's time which makes them listenable for me.

But Agnetha's albums are a mixed bag in my opinion. While there's songs that I love on Wrap Your Arms Around Me such as The Heat Is On, Wrap Your Arms Around Me and Take Good Care Of Your Children, a lot of the songs on the albums are out of date, substandard and don't keep me going through the album. Also, there's something about the backing vocals which sound off-putting. I do love all the bonus tracks on the 2005 reissue though. I listen to those songs more.
The first side of Eyes Of A Woman is awesome and I can listen through it with no problem. But the enjoyment wanes off just as We Should Be Together starts but doesn't return until the last two songs on the album.
Similarly, on I Stand Alone, I only listen to The Last Time and I Wasn't The One on the first side of the album but I love the whole of the 2nd side.
Agnetha's albums are like rice and chips: half and half. I shouldn't have said that because I quite fancy that now with curry sauce.