Recording for this song commenced in October, 1973. Similar in style to Me And Bobby And Bobby's Brother, Suzy-Hang-Around is another song about childhood memories, though this time it's not so much on the positive side.
Benny's character sings about how when he was 10 and his sister Suzy was 9, he didn't like her hanging around all the time as she would follow him everywhere. He wanted to hang out and do cool boy things with his boy friends, and didn't like the idea of including a girl. Despite attempts from their mother to try and have peace, as Mama accurately points out that Suzy's never done anything to harm them, the main character and his friends mercilessly make fun of Suzy, call her "Suzy-Hang-Around" and tell her that nobody wants her around. And it's so mean! Why can't they just play together in harmony??
As sad and mean as this song is, I think it does accurately represent how some sibling relationships can be, and is not in anyway trying to promote this sort of behavior. As a middle sibling myself, I guess I sort of relate more to Suzy than Benny's character, though thankfully any sibling rivalries I've experienced weren't as bad as the characters in the song.
While a lot of ABBA songs are more on the fictitious sides and not retelling of experiences from their personal lives, I've always wondered if the ABBA members took from their own person experiences for this song. 3/4 members have siblings, and Agnetha, Benny, and Bjorn are all older siblings. But it's just a thought.
Anyways, this song has a lot of beautiful harmonies from Bjorn, Agnetha, and Frida, backing up Benny's lead vocals. I especially love the outro to the song with all the "oooooh"s and "mmmm"s. It's such a beautiful arrangement, and I kinda wish ABBA did even more vocal arrangements like that in their songs.
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