Song Analysis - Crazy World

 I've always loved Crazy World.  It's actually a pretty funny song, with the main character of the song coming to a false conclusion and basically panicking over it making rash decisions based off this misconception.  

Recorded in October of 1974, the song is about a guy, who wakes up thinking about his girlfriend, so he gets up, takes a walk, and decides to stop by her place.  Only when he gets there, he sees this guy leaving her front door, and drive off.  The main character is so shocked, realizing that his girlfriend his cheating on him!  His girlfriend steps out to see him just standing their on the sidewalk, completely stunned, and she seems so oblivious and casual, like nothing is wrong.  She has no idea why he would be acting like this.  

So he confronts her, and is like "How could you do this?  Have you been lying to me this whole time??  You tell me you love me and that I'm the only one all while hanging out with other guys behind your back???"  

But she just smiles, and is like omg nooooo, you have this all wrong.  "There's a couple of men in my life, and one of them is my brother Joe."  Joe has been away for a while, and she hasn't seen him for a long time, but he's moving back and now the main character will be able to get to know him better and learn that he's this really nice guy.  

This comes as quite a relief to the main character, and he goes from thinking to himself, "And I close my eyes,will you leave me girl, then I realise it’s a crazy world" to "And I close my eyes. never leave me, girl . when I realise it’s a crazy world."  

The sudden twist at the end, with the main character realizing that this was just a mistake on his end, is really interesting and funny, and is honestly quite reminiscent of a song from a good 7 years or so later, Two For The Price Of One.  Both songs have this sort of absurd setup, though Crazy World is a little bit more believable as you can't buy girls like is being suggested in Two For The Price Of One, only for the last part of the song to make you realize that up until now everything was a bit too crazy and brings you back to a more reasonable conclusion.  In Two For The Price Of One, the main character realizes that he's been tricked as the second girl that he seemingly gets when getting with girl number 1 is just her mother, and in Crazy World it's that the guy in question is just the girlfriend's brother and not some horrible cheating scenario.

Bjorn sings the lead vocals on this song, and sings it in such a serious way that you have no reason to suspect it's all just one big joke, and I like that a lot.  It makes you think about how serious this situation is to the main character, and it's kind of funny when you compare the seriousness of his vocals to the reality of the situation, that there is no cheating at all and he was just making rash decisions without even talking to his girlfriend first.  

Agnetha and Frida have some beautiful backing vocals on this song, during the choruses, but also specifically on the bridge, "Baby how could you do it. You just told me lies and you meet behind my back with other guys. Baby how could you tell me there was only me? I was stupid to believe you. I was blind but now I see." I also LOVE LOVE LOVE Benny's piano playing on this song. Especially when you strip out just the piano stems and isolate Benny's piano alone.  It is soooo beautiful!

I haven't reuploaded any of my old Lego animations to YouTube, the videos that got me involved with YouTube in the first place, but if you remember, I had made an animation about the song and still to this day it remains one of my favorites.  Regardless of how bad my animating skills were, I think my video captured the essence of the song perfectly.  Maybe someday I'll reupload the video.  Idk.  

Even though the song was originally recorded in 1974, the song wasn't released until 1976 as the B-Side to Money, Money, Money.  I think they also added more to the song and really finished it then as well.  Nowadays the song is included as bonus tracks to ABBA's self-titled album as it fits better on that album than Arrival.

Anyways, I love this song so much as you can probably tell.  It's just amazing, funny, and really well written.