"Comfort Me" appreciation thread

I haven't listened to it in a very long time but I love how different it is. Spooky! Haunting. But in a good way. In fact, I'm overdue a Frida appreciation day. The thing is, I've never been as keen on Shine (the album) as I am Something's Going On but I think maybe it's underrated.

Yes, I really feel there was a lot of untapped potential within Frida. Such a pity she didn't truly pursue it longterm. Brave gal with some of her choices.

I totally agree that Frida was braver, artistically speaking. I didn't realise that "Comfort Me" was a cover - I see its writer, Pete Glenister, second on the right in that photo. I wonder how he felt about not playing on the song (he's a guitarist) that he had written?

"Comfort Me" always reminds me of some of the beautifully dark "chanson" style songs that Pete wrote with Alison Moyet in later years. In fact, I can imagine it sitting nicely on any of her albums from "Hoodoo" onwards.

Great song. Even if the arrangements on the two versions aren't miles apart, Frida's vocal is far less mannered and much more soulful than the original. Love it. It was a great way to end the narrative of that album. In may ways, I think that "Shine" encapsulates "Fridaness" far more effectively than SGO.

I think Frida was disillusioned by the business by then, I remember an interview in Scotland’s Evening Times newspaper and Frida saying “the British music scene moves so fast, I sometimes feel I am too old for it.”
Considering she was just 39 I was rather sad to read this.
I think both ladies didn’t really have real passion for their solo stuff by this time, Something’s Going On, yes. Shine is good, but it’s like an Abba album with a whole variety of styles and not cohesive like Djupa Andetag. I remember reading that Shine only sold 300,000 worldwide (rather good these days!) Frida also was quoted as saying there no point recording a follow up if no one willing to buy it. I always feel that the different record companies Abba and Polar had in the 70s and early 80s had a negative effect on the solo albums as revenue created in Scandinavia could not be used as advertising in UK etc as of all the different record companies the ladies had to deal with.
I think Sting was muted as a producer but Frida thought he would be too dominate in the sound, odd as Phil Collins’ sound is all over his work with Frida. This: is just pure rumour and speculation: I remember an Abba fan who lived in Aberdeen, she sold some ABBA records in the Record Collector magazine she told me that Ruzzo did not want Frida recording any music as she was now an aristocrat and it was beneath her. To me in hindsight it seems unlikely as she recorded in the early nineties etc, but it was an odd rumour.
The other thing that’s odd that Frida did not perform anything solo in the UK, first time was with B.A Robertson on the Harty show

The recent book about Frida by Remko Van Drongelen throws a decent amount of light on that era. Frida wrote and demoed a fair amount of material months before the contract with Steve Lillywhite was signed. She seemed much more active in the recording and song selection process than she had with SGO. I guess the recording of SGO and the positive reception showed her she could do it? Shine really seemed to give her a lift - so much so that she brought a keyboard with her while she was promoting the album, writing more and more new material. Crucially, she was due to return to the studio in February 1985 with Steve Lillywhite and the same crew of musicians. It seems that the chart placings is what knocked the stuffing out of her and it seems to have been Frida herself who pulled the plug on a follow-up album. What a shame. I loved Lillywhite's production and the way he worked with Frida.

Shine is the solo album I return to most. It's got a nice balance of poppyness and edge. Side one flows brilliantly. Side two is more eclectic. Come To Me - despite being praised by Lillywhite in a recent interview - seems a little too mild compared to the other songs. Chemistry Tonight is well performed and has some great production, but it kinda flows by me. Don't Do It and Comfort Me round things off beautifully. For my money, Don't Do It has aged the best: the heartbeat production, the dreamy vocal delivery, the prettiness of the melody - they all add up to quite a sneaky little heart-grabber. Wasn't it Agnetha's favourite? It didn't sweep me away in 1984, but I absolutely love it now. Comfort Me is pure class from start to finish. The resigned ache in the vocal, and the brittle little moments of desolation: it's just brilliant storytelling. It could have soundtracked that sad scene in the awful Love Actually, where Emma Thompson discovers Alan Rickman's infidelity. 

You're right Alan , the promotion was rubbish/non-existent in the UK market. IMO, they might have got a bit more mileage out of the album if they'd gone with Come To Me as the second single. I think their attempt to hitch Frida to Big Country's coattails was too cynical. It might have made a reasonable third single - or fourth, behind One Little Lie. If the album campaign had followed the original plan, we'd have had the non-album recordings as B-sides, and we might have heard Can't Be Serious (a Frida composition), I'm One Of God's Children (possibly a 1940s torch song?) and Chris Rea's When Love Turns To Lies. I wonder if they'll consider a 40th anniversary expanded edition of the album (or do it a year later to coincide with Frida's 80th birthday)?

I think Frida's decision to pull the plug on her recording career might have happened a little before she met Ruzzo? I'd be horrified if she had capitulated to such snobbish attitudes, lamont . Hopefully it was just a rumour born of dodgy speculation. As you say, the Djupa Andetag album - which came when she was actually married - kinda kills that notion.



 

Do these recordings actually exist? I have the Remko's book but didn't have time to read it yet. It would be great if Frida approved of their release as bonus tracks on the anniversary edition of Shine! I think the album is more apprecuated today than it was at the time of its release, so I don't think it's completely impossible.

And back to the topic - Comfort Me is my absolute favourite from the album. So haunting and eerie!

Mer Girl by Madonna reminded me so much of Comfort Me, hauntingly good.

I’m not sure I was aware that Frida was living in the UK in the early 80s. She was no where. Agnetha, on the other hand, who was living in Sweden and not flying, seemed to be much more active in the promotions department. As CBS was handling both, criticism can’t be levelled at the record company. Agnetha didn’t do much for Eyes of A Woman, but that seems to be because of being traumatised by her UK coach crash in 1983. She was back in 1988 though.

Maybe age discrimination was a factor for Frida. Being five years older than Agnetha, that’s a long time in pop music. I still recall a 1990s (or perhaps 2000s) ABBA documentary where one of the talking heads described Frida as looking like Agnetha’s grandmother. What the…?

Or perhaps saving face? She jumped ship to Warners, who at least had an international operation.

Still a fact though that ABBA in the 1980s - and anyone associated with it - was toxic*. No amount of promotion was going to make a great deal of difference. It must have been quite hard to take, being part of an act that was so big in the 1970s and early 80s, and then suddenly not being able to sell many records. Perhaps not such a problem for Agnetha who was happy to be a “small star” as she put it, but Frida had bigger ambitions.

* I Know Him So Well was a big hit not because of the ABBA connection but in spite of it. And having the Top of the Pops presenter announce it as a “Tim Rice song”, in an attempt at erasing Björn and Benny from pop history.

It’s odd. ABBA can just f**k off between Waterloo and SOS, and from early 1982 until ABBA Gold. We either loved them or we daren’t even speak their name!

I definitely saw A For Agnetha on TV, but I think it was quite a bit after the release of the album. Certainly, I knew all of the songs inside out by then (and it wasn't an album I played to death).

I've always been puzzled by the story that the TV shows turned their noses up at the chosen single. If it's true, then Epic carries the blame. The rest of Europe had chosen Come To Me (France chose Twist In The Dark but possibly a little later?). But the shows are surely about the star power of the guest, and not the song? There are certainly many clips from shows like Wogan and Russell Harty and all the rest of it with performances by big (and big-ish) names of singles that went absolutely nowhere.

It looks a bit like Epic panicked when it came to Frida. She didn't "play the game" when it came to a commercial sound or aesthetic, but she definitely delivered the goods. I just wish that the confidence and ballsiness that she showed when it came to picking material and producers extended to her promotional activities. While ABBA's star might have been dimming, she should still have had the power to call a few more shots. Epic squandered both Shine and Eyes Of A Woman. All promotion seemed to come from Polar: Epic was asleep at the wheel.