Frida Lyngstad life and biography

Anni-Frid Prinzessin Reuss von Plauen, often known simply as Frida, is a Norwegian-born Swedish pop singer. She was one of the four members of Swedish group ABBA. She is formally styled Her Serene Highness Princess Anni-Frid Synni Reuss of Plauen following her marriage to a German prince of the former sovereign House of Reuss in 1992.

Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad was born to Alfred Haase, was a young sergeant in the German Army who arrived in Ballangen in 1943 during World War II. Although he was already married, Haase met a pretty young Norwegian girl named Synni Lyngstad and wooed her with a bag of potatoes—a rare and valuable commodity in wartime Norway. Synni reciprocated with a gift of whale meat, and the pair struck up a relationship. Eventually Synni became pregnant, but after the war ended Haase left Norway before his daughter was born.
Lyngstad grew up believing that her father drowned when his ship back to Germany sank. But this proved to be false. In 1977, at the height of ABBA's popularity, Lyngstad and her father were reunited in Switzerland. Their meeting, despite being cordial, did not lead to a sustained relationship. “It would have been different if I'd been a child. But it's difficult to get a father when you're 32 years old,” Lyngstad explained. “I can't really connect to him and love him the way I would have if he'd been around when I grew up.”

When Lyngstad was 18 months old, she moved with her mother and grandmother to Torshälla, Sweden, in order to escape the discrimination that children of German soldiers faced in postwar Norway, where bitterness about the Nazi occupation lasted for decades after the war. But only months after the family arrived in Sweden, Lyngstad's mother passed away, leaving her grandmother as her sole guardian.

At 11 years old, Lyngstad made her stage debut performing for a Red Cross charity event. Two years later, at the age of 13, she was hired as a vocalist by a local dance band. For the next eight years, Lyngstad worked as a singer for various dancehall acts around the country. On September 3, 1967, Sweden switched its traffic pattern from driving on the left side of the road to the right; all drivers were advised to stay home except for essential travel. That same night EMI Music Sweden staged a national talent competition called New Faces. They made an agreement to showcase the winner on live TV to celebrate the traffic switch. So that night after Lyngstad won first place, millions of Swedish households tuned in to watch Lyngstad perform live. “It's just like a dream,” she marveled in an interview after the performance. EMI producer Olle Bergman said, “We really liked her as an artist and I thought she had all that it took to go places.”

On 3 April 1963, at age 17, Frida married salesman and fellow musician Ragnar Fredriksson. They had two children: Hans Ragnar (born 26 January 1963) and Ann Lise-Lotte (25 February 1967 - 13 January 1998). They separated early in 1969 and were officially divorced on 19 May 1970. On the very same day, Lyngstad's grandmother, Arntine, died, aged 71.

Despite this promising start to her career, it took several years for Lyngstad to achieve commercial success. She recorded seven solo singles for EMI over the next two years, but none of them achieved much airplay. Lyngstad spent most of her time performing in cabaret shows across Sweden. Then, in 1969, she met and fell in love with Benny Andersson, keyboardist of The Hep Stars, a popular Swedish pop group in the 1960s. Andersson had recently been working with Björn Ulvaeus, another Swedish pop star who was also happened to date a singer named Agnetha Fältskog. In 1970, the quartet performed together for the first time in a cabaret act called Festfolk. Two years later, they released a single called “People Need Love” that became a minor hit in Sweden. Renaming themselves ABBA, an acronym of the first letters of each of their first names (Anni-Frid, Benny, Björn, Agnetha) and also the name of a popular Swedish canned fish company, the group achieved its big break in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. ABBA entered a new single called “Waterloo,” an upbeat, disco-influenced pop track. They won first place, and the contest catapulted “Waterloo” to No. 1 on the UK pop charts and to No. 6 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100. ABBA was on its way to becoming one of world's biggest pop groups. Lyngstad clearly enjoyed the spotlight more than the other three members of ABBA. She truly liked to tour and to meet audience members one-on-one. She took an active part in co-designing the famed ABBA costumes for their tours and TV performances. Since the members of ABBA went their separate ways, Frida has been the only one who openly regrets there has never been a reunion to date.

In 1982, during ABBA's last year as a working band, Frida recorded and released her first post-Abba solo album. This was also her first solo album in English. The Phil Collins-produced album was called Something's Going On, and became a big success for Frida worldwide. A much rockier sound was found on many of the songs and Phil Collins' bombastic drum sound contributed a lot, especially on the lead single. The album sold 1.5 million copies and spawned the successful single “I Know There's Something Going On”, which topped the charts in Switzerland, Belgium, Costa Rica and France, where it stayed No 1 for five weeks. The song also reached the top five in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway and Australia amongst others. In the United States, the single reached #13 in March 1983 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #9 on Radio & Records, and was the 20th biggest selling single in the US that year.

The song and its video were heavily promoted and played on MTV. The album itself received good reviews, with Billboard writing: “ABBA's auburn-haired songstress makes a bold solo project a stunning success”, while Mark Coleman described the album in the third edition of Rolling Stone Album Guide as “a sharp, rock-oriented, delightfully eclectic album”. William Cooper had a similar opinion in Allmusic: “Frida escapes the creative limitations of being a member of one of the world's most popular groups on this solid and often riveting album”. Swedish Television SVT documented this historical event by filming the whole recording process. The result became a one-hour TV documentary, including interviews with Frida and Phil, Björn and Benny, as well as all the musicians on the album. Due to the success of this album and its lead single, Frida was voted “Best Female Artist of the Year” 1982, by the readers of Sweden's biggest evening paper Aftonbladet, receiving the Swedish Music Award Price Rockbjörnen.
In 1983, Lyngstad assisted with Abbacadabra, and recorded one of the tracks with two different male vocalists in different languages, including Frenchman Daniel Balavoine on the track "Belle" and on the English version “Time” with B. A. Robertson. This track was a cover of “Arrival”, an instrumental track from the ABBA album of the same name.

Lyngstad's next album was the experimental Shine (1984). This album was recorded at Studios De La Grande Armée in Paris, France and produced by Steve Lillywhite, known for his work with artists like Peter Gabriel, U2, Rolling Stones and Morrissey amongst others. The young producer Lillywhite was only 25 when this album was recorded and he gave Frida a very experimental sound and managed to create a relaxed atmosphere in the studio. The album had much less success than hoped though it reached the Top 20 in many European countries, #6 in Sweden being its highest position. One of the songwriters and backing vocalist for this album was Kirsty MacColl, who was killed in a boating accident in Mexico in December 2000. Lyngstad dedicated a song on her most recent compilation album to MacColl, “Chemistry Tonight”, which MacColl had co-written.

In 1982, Lyngstad left Sweden and moved to London. In 1986, she relocated to Switzerland. In 1988, Lyngstad became a grandmother when her daughter, Ann Lise-Lotte, gave birth to a son named Jonathan.
In 1986 Frida was in the choir for the recording of her former husband Benny Andersson's song “Klinga Mina Klockor”. Also in 1987, Lyngstad recorded the single “Så Länge Vi Har Varann” (“As Long As We Have Each Other”) with the Swedish pop group Ratata, one of Lyngstad's favourites. One day singer Mauro Scocco called and said he had a song suitable for a duet. After hearing it, Lyngstad accepted immediately. The song was and still is, a big success in Sweden. The song was also recorded in English under the title of “As long as I have you”. An English language video of the song was produced and an Australian release of this song which was scheduled with Festival Records and notified to record shops in January 1998 was eventually shelved.
In 1990, Lyngstad became a member of the committee of the Swedish environmental organization Det Naturliga Steget (The Natural Step). The organization wanted a “famous face” to help them reach the public, and in 1991 she became chairwoman for the organization Artister För Miljön (Artists For The Environment). In 1992, Lyngstad performed live at the Stockholm Water Festival at the Kings Castle and released the environmental charity single with her cover of Julian Lennon's song “Saltwater”. All the money from this single went to charity. In 1993, on Queen Silvia's 50th birthday, Frida was asked to perform “Dancing Queen” on stage, as performed by ABBA when the king and queen got married. Frida contacted The Real Group and together they performed the song live at the Stockholm Opera House in front of the king and queen. The Swedish prime minister at the time, Ingvar Carlsson, also present that night, said it was an ingenious step to do “Dancing Queen” a cappella. This performance was filmed by Swedish TV and can be seen in Frida - The DVD.
On 26 August 1992, Lyngstad married a German nobleman who was five years her junior - the late architect Prince Heinrich Ruzzo Reuss of Plauen (24 May 1950 – 29 October 1999). By this marriage, she has two stepdaughters, the twins Princess Henriette Reuss and Princess Pauline Reuss (both born 2 June 1977, Oslo, Norway). The prince died of lymphoma in 1999; a year earlier, on 13 January 1998, Lyngstad's daughter, Ann Lise-Lotte Casper (born Fredriksson), died of injuries sustained in a car accident in Livonia, Michigan - a western suburb of Detroit - in the United States of America. Through Lyngstad's marriage to Heinrich Ruzzo, who was a student at the same boarding school as the reigning King of Sweden, she became acquainted with the Swedish royal family and eventually became close friends with Sweden's Queen Silvia.
In 1996, Lyngstad recorded her Swedish language album Djupa andetag (Deep Breaths). It was a long-awaited album as 12 years had passed since Shine was released. The album attracted overall positive reviews and was a big success in Sweden where it became #1 on the album chart. Frida did many TV appearances in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland to promote the album. Djupa andetag was one of the very first Swedish albums to be released as a combined audio–video CD-ROM, including interviews with Lyngstad, footage from the making of the album, as well as promotional videos. Despite the fact that Djupa andetag was officially only released in Scandinavia and the songs were entirely sung in Swedish, a remix album of the single tracks “Även En Blomma”, “Alla Mina Bästa År” (a duet with Roxette's Marie Fredriksson) and “Ögonen” was released in Germany in 1998, entitled Frida - The Mixes. A one-hour documentary about the making of this album, both in the studio and from Frida's home in Mallorca, Spain, can be seen in Frida - The DVD. A follow-up album with producer Anders Glenmark was reportedly in the works, but was shelved due to the death of Frida's daughter in 1998.
Several one-off recordings followed, including a 2002 duet with opera singer Filippa Giordano of the “Barcarolle” from Jacques Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffman as well as the song “The Sun Will Shine Again”, written especially for Lyngstad by former Deep Purple member Jon Lord, and recorded in 2004. Neither of these were however released as singles: “Barcarolle” is only available on the Japanese edition of Giordano's album Rosso Amore, and "The Sun Will Shine Again" can be found on Jon Lord's album Beyond The Notes (although a limited-promotional single had been made available). Lord and Lyngstad made several TV appearances in Germany performing the song, on shows like The Sunday Night Classics and The Golden Henne Gala. Lyngstad also joined Lord on stage singing the song during his European autumn tour in 2004.
For the 2004 semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest, staged in Istanbul thirty years after ABBA had won the contest in Brighton, Lyngstad appeared in a special comedy video made for the interval act, entitled Our Last Video. Each of the four members of the group appeared briefly in cameo roles, as did, amongst others, Cher and British comedian Rik Mayall. The video was not included in the official DVD release of the Eurovision Contest, but was issued as a separate DVD release on the Universal Music label. It was billed as the first time the four had worked together since the group split in 1982 – a partial truth. In fact, they each filmed their appearances separately. Also in 2004, Lyngstad appeared with former band mates Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus at London's fifth anniversary performance of Mamma Mia!, the musical based on ABBA songs. In 2005, she joined all three of her former ABBA colleagues at the Swedish premiere of Mamma Mia! at the arena Cirkus in Stockholm.

On 15 November 2005, to celebrate Lyngstad's 60th birthday, Universal Records released the box set Frida, consisting of all the solo albums she recorded for Polar Music, all digitally remastered and including a set of bonus tracks. Also included is Frida - The DVD. On this 3½ hour DVD Lyngstad talks about her entire career in the music business. Filmed in the Swiss Alps, she talks about her singing technique and about her career both before and after Abba and explains how songs were performed and recorded. In collaboration with Swedish TV, SVT, the DVD includes many rare TV clips from her early performances, like her first TV performance with “En Ledig Dag”, (“A Day Off”). Also included are TV-documentary's about the making and recordings of Something's Going On and Djupa andetag (Deep Breaths).
In September 2010, a new album by musician Georg Wadenius titled “Reconnection” was released. Frida and George had discussed working together for many years, as they had long been good friends. The album opens with her rendition of the traditional tune Morning Has Broken popularized by Cat Stevens. This song by Cat Stevens, is a favourite for Frida and the song was also on the playlist in the church for Frida and Prince Ruzzo's wedding on August 26, 1992.

On 16 February 2011 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 45 minute play featuring Frida and the play's writer, long-term fan and performer Christopher Green. The play, Like An Angel Passing Through My Room, was billed as ‘a story about love. The unconditional love of a devoted fan...about a real and an imagined intimacy.' It was a project several years in the making; what started as an upbeat reflection on fame and the notion of being a fan, developed into a meditation on the communication between two people and coping with the blows life deals. In an interview with Frida she and Green talked about her long recovery from the death of her husband in 1999. The play is deeply personal and reflective but with a firmly comic sensibility.

Today, Frida still engages in charity work - environmental protection in particular. In 2005, she stated in an interview that she had no interest in ever returning to a music career. She currently lives in Zermatt, Switzerland.

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