Song Analysis - I'm A Marionette

 The next song in ABBA's mini-musical is I'm A Marionette, and what a song!  For the first time in the musical, Agnetha and Frida together are playing the Girl With The Golden Hair, and they sing the song with so much dramatics!  This live version of I'm A Marionette is quite different from the one that would ultimately be released on their forthcoming album. For starters, it's quite fast paced, and honestly feels very much like when you're in an anxious situation and your heart is beating super fast and - sorry don't need to tell you all about my anxiety hahhaa.  

At the end of chorus, they sing "I'm a marionette" rather than ending with the line "... just a silly old clown.". Instead of singing "Like a doll, like a puppet with no will at all," they add a "And I'm like a doll...", and after that verse, it just goes straight into the "Look this way, just a little smile is what they say..." verse.  Also there's a couple of dance breaks after each chorus and the song doesn't have an outro like the studio version does, instead, after the last chorus, it immediately blends into the next track, which is actually another dance break.  

So basically the studio version is: Verse 1, chorus, verse 2, chorus, verse 3, chorus, outro, where as the live version is: verse 1, chorus, verse 2, verse 3, chorus.

The song is basically about our main character from the musical, The Girl With The Golden Hair, realizing that she has no control over her life, and she's basically like a marionette.  Everyone's telling her to go here, go there, smile, spin, sing, walk, talk, fall, and she has no control or direction over her life.  Everyone's telling her "You're so free!" but she's not.  She has no freedom.  She's just a puppet, or a marionette if you will.

This song is actually really sad and stressful, and Agnetha and Frida did such a good job capturing those feelings of hopelessness and no control in their performance.  A full performance of I'm A Marionette is included in ABBA the Movie, and I'm so glad they included it in its entirety, though there are a few clips of ABBA traveling around Australia and dealing with the media interspersed throughout.  but the performance is just so good.  When I was younger I used to despise the Girl With The Golden Hair for some reason, I think because it's so different and strange and it's so weird, you go to a concert to see your idols on stage, to hear them sing, and instead they're putting on a musical???  But no, it's really creative and really cool and I like it. 

I was reading ABBA on Record the other day (I've made it to the halfway point of the book!) and I was surprised that he mentioned in regards to the Marionette featured on the cover of ABBA the Album, "the marionette refers to the group's feeling of entrapment when everyone wanted a piece of them during the tour, as depicted in the film, and to the mini musical song "I'm A Marionette;" but I don't get that at all???  Wouldn't it just be in reference to the song, "I'm A Marionette" which was written prior to the band's 1977 tour and has no connection to how they felt during the tour?  idk.

As I've mentioned my last couple of posts regarding the Girl With The Golden Hair, the musical is not about any of the ABBA members or their personal lives.  Perhaps they could have taken inspiration from some of the experiences they had experienced during their hectic lives as superstars, but the song is not about them personally.  So why would they have the marionette on the cover be about that rather than the musical, which takes up 1/3 of the album's tracklist?

Anyways, when they recorded the song in studio for The Album, they slowed down the song and made it more dramatic even, perhaps even more musical-ly, more theatrical.  There's this absolutely amazing bass throughout the song that sounds epic.  And to close out the song, they repeat the first verse, "You're so free, that's what everybody's telling me. Yet I feel I'm like an outward bound pushed around refugee.... " and the song fades out like that.  

I like the two different versions of I'm A Marionatte, even though they're so vastly different.  Each version is special in it's own way, and while I kind of wish they kept the recorded version closer to the way they performed it live, I don't think that live energy could have been replicated in the studio.  So when you're in the mood for a more toned down but theatrical performance of the song, listen to the studio version, and when you want to experience literal AnXiETy, listen to the one from ABBA the Movie or any of the bootleg audios haha.

I did sync up the live performance from ABBA the Movie to the studio version, but honestly just go look up the live performance on its own .  You won't regret it!