Writing to Agnetha – Some thoughts

As I write this the site has been online for almost seven months. During that time I have received a number of requests from people who wanted to write to Agnetha and asked if I could forward her private address to them. Here’s my answer to them, hopefully relieving me of the duty to individually answer requests in the future:

Assume that I don’t have her private address. If I knew it, I definitely wouldn’t make it public. Under no circumstances. It’s as simple as that.

Even if you know just a little bit about Agnetha you should know that she is very concerned to protect her privacy. You also should know that she has very good reasons to do that. She has told us that a portion of fan mail she receives is not enjoyable. There are some people out there ”who don’t feel well”, as she has expressed it, and those ”fans” (they aren’t true fans, of course) sometimes send letters she doesn’t want to read. I find this very comprehensible. I wouldn’t want to read them either. (Some few mails have stranded in my email box and I tell you I felt glad I got them and not she.) Making her private address public would mean to open the door to those people.

Now, you don’t belong to that group of people, of course. You probably only, like many fans, feel the notion to write a few lines to her to tell her how much you love her voice and her songs, to let her know how much they mean to you and perhaps would like to ask for an autograph. Let me tell you that you don't need her private address for that. There are other ways to do it. If you do it right and don’t expect her to send personal reply letters of three pages, chances are good it will be read and appreciated and you will get a reply with an autograph. You will have to be patient and give her some time because she apparently has other things to do than replying to fan mail daily or weekly. In this way I became the happy owner of an autographed sleeve booklet of the ”My Colouring Book” album which I now can treasure for the rest of my life. I had to wait six months for a reply, but honestly, who wouldn’t have waited half a lifetime if necessary? (In fact I did wait half a lifetime because it took me 25 years to get old and wise enough to be able to write down all this what now is this website.)

So here’s my advice of how to do it. There is an official address where you can send fan letters to Agnetha. This address has been published on www.abbasite.com , the official fan forum of Universal Music, Sweden. There also have been confirmed returns from Warner Music, Sweden, the company which published the new album. But as far as I know this address isn’t published anywhere as official, so I won’t publish it either and you will have to find out yourself, if you want to try it. The address of Universal Music is:

Universal Music
Box 55777
114 83 Stockholm
Sweden

Put your letter to Agnetha into an envelope and address it to ”Ms. Agnetha Fältskog, c/o Universal Music”. If you want an autograph reply, add the picture or booklet you want to be signed and a ready-to-use reply envelope with the return address written on it. Additionally add international reply coupons, Swedish stamps for 20 crowns or a 20-crown note for the reply fees. Make it 40 crowns if you’re writing from overseas to be on the safe side. It’s just polite to make clear you don’t expect her to pay for the return, if she already gives you the honor to spend the time reading your letter.

Important: Don’t glue the envelope, so it can be easily opened and checked from a third party to sort out the offensive or rude rubbish from the crackpots and nerds. Openness will be answered with trust. Everything you honestly can write without being silly should be no problem for anyone to read beside Agnetha.

Write another short letter to the Universal staff, asking kindly to pass on the envelope. Explain that it contains an autograph request and that it can be opened for security’s sake. Don’t forget to identify yourself with full name and address. Put the envelope to Agnetha and the letter to Universal into a third envelope, write the above given address on it, don’t forget senders address and stamps and off it goes. You can glue this one of course. Good luck, my friend.