It's the end of a decade...

Tonight at midnight will be the start of another new year, and a whole new decade.  It's hard to believe the 2010s will be over.  So much happened in the past 10 years.  There were many ups and downs, but I'd say some of the best things have happened to me this decade.

In 2010, I discovered ABBA.  I didn't listen to a lot of music back then, and it was really rare that a band stood out to me as much as ABBA did.  I fell in love with their music, and if not for ABBA, I would be a totally different person today.  I never would have thought one band would change and have such an effect on my life.

I learned to draw (or more like get better at drawing, I've been drawing since I was a baby, lol), sew, and animate because of my obsession for ABBA, and I made friends for life.

I created both my blog and YouTube channel in 2012.  I never would have expected that my channel would have 7.38k subscribers 7 years later!

In October of 2013, I got Agnetha's autograph, and in 2016, I got Frida, Benny, and Bjorn's autographs.  These two simple postcards are some of my most treasure possessions, and I'm so honored that I was lucky enough to get them.  I'll always be thankful to Gorel Hanser for helping me to receive ABBA's autographs and for all the help she's given me in regards to my book, and I'm so bummed that I forgot to ask for Gorel's autograph at the same time.  Maybe someday I'll get to meet her!

And of course I mustn't forget my book.  When I was a kid, I'd always dreamed of publishing my crazy comics and stories, drawing all the illustrations myself, and I never would have thought that I'd actually be able to publish and illustrate something.  In 2013, I published the Story of ABBA v.1, and 3 years later I published the new and improved one.

I wish I could say the year 2019 was a good one for me.  Personally, a lot of weird stuff happened this year, and early on I had decided that it was pretty much the worst year of my life.  That's not saying there weren't positive things, and I am happy and thankful for all the nice things that have happened.

Anyways, I hope 2020 will be amazing and bring a happy, positive start to the new decade.

Happy new year everyone. :)
- Becky/ABBAFan456

Happy 73rd birthday, Benny!

Today's Benny's 73rd birthday!  Grattis på födelsedagen!  I hope he has an absolutely amazing day celebrating with his family and friends.

In honor of his birthday, I drew this picture of Benny and filmed this speedpaint as well. :)

Rest in peace, Marie Fredrikkson

Today, Swedish singer and member of the duo Roxette, Marie Fredrikkson passed away at 61.  I will admit, while I know of a few of Roxette's songs, I've never actually listened to any of their songs myself, but from what I've heard, I know that Marie Fredrikkson was an amazing singer with so much talent, she will be greatly missed by everyone.

On Frida's 1996 album Djupa Andetag, Marie sings a duet with Frida called "Alla Mina Basta Ar". Prior to that, the two of them collaborated on other projects, such as the Artister för Miljö gala in 1992.  

I feel like I should actually go and listen to some of Marie Fredrikkson and Roxette's work, so I hope to spend today doing that. 

Rest in peace, Marie.  <3

Happy 8th birthday, Benny Anderdoll!

8 years ago today, I added the final stitches on my Benny doll, thus completing my homemade ABBA doll collection.

It's really hard to believe that it's been 8 years.  Half of the time, my dolls had been so raggedy and worn, I barely touched them.  I've said this so many times, but I am so glad I made the decision the make new bodies.

Anyways, happy 8th birthday, Benny doll, and here's to many more. :)

Happy 74th birthday, Frida!

Today, our dear Princess Frida turns 74!  Grattis på födelsedagen!  I hope she has an absolutely amazing day celebrating with her family and friends. <3

In honor of Frida's birthday, I drew this drawing of her from 1976 on the show Midnight Special.

I've also filmed a speedpaint (I accidentally recorded it in 480 instead of 720 like normal, oops, so the quality if kinda bad...), so you can check that out below. :)

Photoshop

A lot of people nowadays are skilled with technique of photoshopping, whether they doing it in the actual Adobe Photoshop software or other software that does similar things, like GIMP.  Some people are really good at photo editing photos, it's hard to tell which is real and which is not.

Last night, I started working on a digital portrait of Agnetha for her birthday in April.  I like to draw new portraits each year for the ABBA members' birthdays and film speedpaints as well so I have something to share on my YouTube channel now that I don't do animations anymore.  There's this particular photo of Agnetha that I thought looked really pretty and wanted to draw it, however something about it seemed off, and I couldn't quite place it.

About an hour into my drawing, I shared the progress I was making with my dad, and he also noticed something off with the picture.  Agnetha is 31 in this photo, and my dad noticed that she looked a little young.  We ended up comparing this photo with other pictures from this photosession at Raffem.com, and found a picture that looked just like the one I was in the middle of drawing, but it was different.  The notable differences are her bangs, her right eye, her eyebrows, her lips, and also the lines on her face. 

From the look of it, someone edited the first photo of Agnetha, either with a de-aging App of some kind, or by photoshopping it.  What confuses me is, why would anyone do this?  What's the point of editing her face to try and make her look "more pretty"?   Why did they make her lips and eyebrows more full, change the shape of her eye, shrink her hair, remove her adorable fringe, as well as erase the lines that someone has on their face from the natural aging process?  Why?

Anyways, I'm just kinda upset about this and thought I'd share my thoughts.  Even though I was already an hour into my drawing, I don't want to be drawing a fake photo of Agnetha, so I guess it's time to redraw the whole thing.  But that's alright because I can redraw ABBA pictures over and over again and never get tired of it because let's face it, I'm a bit obsessed. xD

As Good As New

Meant to post this a lot earlier, but I've been slacking, oops.

To finish off my series of remaking ABBA's 1978 costumes, here is Benny's outfit.  I thought it would be pretty easy to make, but turns out it was the trickiest of all of them to make, just it didn't take as long to make because I didn't have any embroidery to do. 

Here's a picture of my second attempt at this outfit:

And here is my new and improved one:

For a more detailed post on how I made the outfit, feel free to check out my sewing blog. :)

Happy 8th Birthday, Bjorn Uldollus

Today marks 8 years since I finished my Bjorn doll.  Happy birthday, Bjorn Uldollus!

For some reason out of all the dolls, Bjorn was the one who got the most worn out, and I am just so happy I was able to bring new life to the dolls, Bjorn in particular, by giving them new bodies with no rips and tears.  Here's hoping my dolls will be able to make it for at least another 8 years!!

The King Has Lost His Crown

I recently finished Bjorn's outfit from the 1978 costumes that I've been working on recreating.  Compared to the second version of the outfit (I unfortunately have no pictures of the first version, probably for a good reason, haha), the new one came out amazing, especially the details on the front of the jacket.  Sewing on beads definitely looks a lot better than the glued on sequins.

 Honestly, I'm not 100% happy with the end result, mostly because I have no good, close up pictures of all the details. So I kinda had to make up the design on his belt....  But it's not bad. :3

Version #2

Version #3

Anyways, you can out check out my sewing blog for a more detailed post.

Summer Night City

I've finished another ABBA doll outfit, this time Frida's outfit from 1978.  I actually finished Frida's outfit before I did Agnetha's, just I was missing one last piece for her outfit and it would bother me to put it up before finishing that, so...  Here it is now. :D

The second version of the outfit I ever made.  I had the concept right, I just wasn't very good at sewing so it came out kinda bad.  It's decent, but it's not the best thing in the world.

The new one.

Check out my sewing blog for a more detailed post on how I made Frida's outfit. :3

Bjorn wearing his old ABBA Costumes

Last night was either the opening or some event to celebrate the opening of the new Mamma Mia! the Party restaurant in London.  Bjorn and Benny were there, and for fun, Bjorn decided to come out wearing his outfit from the 1977 tour, and it was really nice seeing him in it again. (He mentioned the last time he wore it was 42 years ago in Perth, 1977, but he also wore it in April of 1978 for a photoshoot and November of 1978 in Japan... :3 ). 

This isn't the first time Bjorn has worn his old ABBA costumes, and that's something I love about him.  :)  Seeing as he's done this a few times now, I thought it would be a great opportunity to make a little compilation post.

In 2008, at the ABBA Fan club event, they played a video where Bjorn was wearing his old Waterloo costume.

 Then in 2014, for a TV show called Welcome to Sweden, Bjorn put on his white jumpsuit from the 1979 tour, as well as a jacket that he seems to have only one once before in Edmonton.

Then in 2018, Bjorn made an appearance on the show Better Late Than Never, wearing his white overalls from 1975.

And finally, from last night, Bjorn wore his 1977 Tour outfit.

If It Wasn't For The Nights

I haven't made any new ABBA doll costumes since switching up my dolls' bodies, so I decided that should change and finally got around to making another set of outfits.  I'm still working on Frida, Bjorn, and Benny's outfits, but so far I've finished Agnetha's outfit, so I thought I'd share. :)

These outfits are from 1978, and while ABBA only wore them for a little bit at the end of the year and a little bit in early 1979, they are some of my favorite ABBA outfits. :)  This is my third time remaking these outfits, and I am a lot happier with the way they turned out this time around.

My second attempt of this costume from 2012.  The first one I've never shared on here before I don't think, but let's just say it's bad.

New and improved. :)

For a more detailed post on this, be sure to check out my sewing blog: Sew Amazing.

7000 Subscribers

Wow, I never ever expected to have so many followers, let alone 7,000 subscribers.  I feel so lucky, honored, happy that thousands of people are watching my videos and decide to subscribe to my channel.  My YouTube Channel has always been something I do for fun in my spare time, and the fact that people actually care about it is mind blowing!  Thank you all so much for caring about my channel and for enjoying my work.  I really appreciate it. <3

Lip-syncing

I've had the idea for this post for quite a while , was going to make a YouTube video on it for my channel, but decided that I'd do a lot better doing it as a blog post, so here it is. :3

Throughout the 70s and 80s, ABBA have performed on numerous TV shows.  On some occasions, they would perform live, but most of the time they would "lip-sync" or "mime" to the studio recordings.  While it was a thing back then for artists to do this, I for some reason have a problem with the idea that ABBA would only lip-sync and not put any effort into their performances.

ABBA are perfectionists.  When they'd perform live on tour, they worked very hard to recreate their iconic sound.  Trying to sound exactly like you do on the studio recording is tough to do live, so it'd make sense that ABBA would simply lip-sync to the studio recordings.  But  to me, it doesn't seem like them to not put any effort into their TV performances.

What if for TV performances, they would sing live either with a pre-recorded backing track to get the instruments right, or with the studio recording playing alongside them as they sang?  (I think that's called playback, but I'm not sure, lol)  And then in post-production, the studio recording could be dubbed over if the audio wasn't good enough and didn't sound "perfect".

I've found a couple of videos to support my theory.

This first one is from 1974.  If you listen closely, you can hear Agnetha and Frida singing live quite clearly over the studio track.  A couple of times the studio track gets louder than their voices, but you can hear them.

Next is this performance from Agnetha in 1983.  The studio recording is quite loud and prominent, but if you listen really, really closely, you can hear her live vocals hidden underneath it.

And then we have this performance from Frida singing "Something's Going On."  Her live vocals are quite prominently in this video alongside the studio recording.

And then there's this performance where in the beginning, you can hear Frida's live vocals a lot in the beginning, and but the studio-recording is quite loud throughout the rest of it.

One could argue, saying that these last 3 videos are from Agnetha and Frida's solo careers, so they were maybe more comfortable with the idea of singing live or something, but why would Agnetha and Frida do anything differently from when they were in ABBA?

I don't know if this post made any sense, but it's just a theory and I'd like to believe that ABBA weren't "fakers" and truly did sing live on TV performances, just they ended up getting dubbed over in the end. :)

Also while I was doing research for this post, I found this interesting article from 1978 where Stig mentions something about live audio.

Stikkan Anderson: "In that same year we recorded another hour-long TV show. We wanted to sing live to show everyone that we weren't afraid of criticism. That programme was called 'The ABBA Story'. But not much did come of those live performances, because the TV sound isn't suitable yet for live performances. You have to understand that an ABBA song takes nights and days of hard work in the studio, where first class equipment is available. You can't recreate this sound just like that. That's why we decided to use a backing track and sing live to that. And it turned out really well. There were people who said that we sounded rather thin and that was justified. In the studio we overdub our vocals, which makes for a full sound. On TV, you can't overdub anything, that's why it sounds thinner. But we'd rather have a thin sound than mime, because ABBA actually isn't that good at miming. They hate it because it's dreary."

Just thought I'd share that. :)  Anyways, if you have any thoughts about this, please feel free to share in the comments below. Remember this is just my theory, not fact.  I'm no expert at this. I wasn't there when ABBA were performing in the TV studio. xD

Agnetha vs Frida

On my YouTube channel, I've been posting videos about my favorite (insert ABBA member here) vocals/songs and from the different eras, like post-ABBA, pre-ABBA, during ABBA, etc.  In the videos, I highlight some of my favorite songs and vocal, and I post separate videos, one per member.  One week I post a video on Frida's vocals, and the next I do one on Agnetha's, but I never do it to try and compare the ABBA members in any way. 

I get a lot of comments on my videos, and I can't help but notice that a lot of the comments try to compare Agnetha and Frida, and mention how one is better than the other.  If the comments were just comparing their vocal styles, the difference in their sound, I don't mind.  But it shouldn't be that one sings better than the other.  Agnetha and Frida are two very unique human beings with different voices and singing styles, of course they sound different. 

Here is a comment I received a bit ago on one of my videos.  The first part of it is okay, as the commenter is stating their opinion, that they've noticed about the difference in their voices.

What I'm confused by however is the last part of the comment.  Comparing the differences between their vocals is fine, but how does that apply to their appearances, to who looks better than the other?  Comparing two beautiful women to each other, trying to pit one against the other, and say that one is more beautiful than the other, doesn't seem right. 

If someone personally prefers Agnetha over Frida, that's one's personal opinion.  I personally don't have a favorite member, I love them all the same, but if someone has a favorite member, that's fine.  And if someone personally likes the way Agnetha looks more than Frida, or the way Frida looks more than Agnetha, I guess that's okay as well.  But that doesn't make it fine to say that "Agnetha was always the better looking one". Someone's opinion doesn't make it a fact that Agnetha is "better looking" than Frida.  That's just ridiculous. 

It's wrong to compare anyone's - men's or women's - appearances in this way, and it's wrong to compare Agnetha and Frida's appearances. Physical appearance is something that makes all humans unique, and everyone is beautiful. 

Happy birthday, Gorel~

Happy birthday to the amazing, lovely, and kind Gorel Hanser. :)  I'm so glad I was able to have the opportunity to speak to her a couple of times.  She so helpful and does so much for the ABBA fan community.  We love you Gorel! Happy birthday!

Take A Chance On Me

As you all know from my last long post, I've been playing the sims and I made my own ABBA sims.  While I've been playing the Sims 3 for over a year now and have been playing with a lot of custom content and mods, I only recently got into the sims Pose Player by user Cmomoney on ModTheSims and all the amazing poses that people make.  I've been quite amazed by the amount of creativity that goes into making custom sims content, and I was a bit curious as to how to do that on my own.  While I don't yet know how to make custom outfits for the sims (I would love to recreate ABBA's actual costumes in the Sims!), I started dabbling in custom poses and I decided to try as my first project poses from one of my favorite photos:

To create custom poses, I had to follow a long video tutorial and learn how to use Blender, but it was all pretty easy to pick up and this is the end result.

Yes I know Bjorn's hand is a little clipped, lol.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I wasn't really able to figure out how to get Bjorn and Benny's hands in their pockets without it looking all weird, and I realized that the silicone models at ABBA the museum are made with similar poses to these ones but different for that exact reason.  So I used the silicone models as reference as well.

I'd say I did a really good job, and I look forward to playing around and recreating more of ABBA's lovely photoshoots in the Sims!

Happy Mother's Day

Shoutout to all the amazing mother's for being such incredible people.  I hope everyone's having a lovely Mother's Day. :)

My Sims

For those of you who don't know, I started playing the Sims 3 just over a year ago, and while the game can be considered a waste of time (especially when playing it for several hours at a time... oops), I quite enjoy the game.  One of the things that I find most exciting is being able to create and customize my own sims.  I get to make my own original story characters and bring them to life, make some of my favorite TV show characters, and I also get to make some of my favorite celebrities. And of course I made ABBA.

While I can't say they're perfect and look 100% like them, I'd say I did a pretty good job.

 For their casual outfits, Agnetha's is inspired by this outfit from 1973, Bjorn's outfit is inspired by this one from 1975, Frida's by this one from 1976, and for Benny's, I used this outfit from 1977 as reference.

 For their career outfits, I gave them outfits that are inspired by the cat dresses, but of course they're not all that accurate since there isn't much to use among the sims outfits as well as the Custom Content that I have a lot of.

And for their fancy outfits, I gave them these outfits from 1980.  (I know the hair is wrong, but until I get better hair, this is what I have for now.)

And here are some better closeups of their faces.

Did I do a good job recreating ABBA in the Sims 3?  I think I did. :)  Maybe I'll try to get more custom content later to try and get some better hair for them, but I'm still really happy with how they turned out.  Anyways, that's all for now.