Song Analysis - Monsieur, Monsieur

 In July 1976, ABBA began working on a track titled Monsieur, Monsieur.  The song is very simple track about finding romance in France, a concept that would later, sort of get revisited four years later in ABBA's Our Last Summer,  specifically with the line, "Strolled through Paris in the night, you and me.  Oh, and we walked along the Seine." However, the song would ultimately get turned into a different song, that being the beautiful My Love, My Life which is similar in concept about leaving a relationship, but a completely different context.

Still, this song is quite beautiful on its own as well. The song starts out with the main character walking through Paris, with this man who she met and fell in love with while visiting France, however as she's only here for a vacation, she unfortunately has to leave.  Similar to Dance (While The Music Goes On), she sings about how "This is our last night in France, Monsieur, Monsieur, so tonight is our last dance," and that tomorrow at the station, is the end of her vacation, so she has to bid her new man an adieu.  Though she struggles with the thought of leaving him as she thinks she's in love.

Agnetha sings the lead on this demo, with honestly some of the most heavenly and sweet vocals I have ever heard from her.  It's just a demo, so there is just a simple piano track with minimal instruments over it, and Agnetha's vocals with no other backing vocals or harmonies.   

While this track has never been officially release anywhere, and definitely not in high quality, a snippet of the track was included in a radio documentary that Swedish radio did on each ABBA member in December 1976, specifically in the one about Agnetha titled "A for Agnetha." There's a lot of talking over the track from Agnetha and the radio presenter, and unfortunately because I don't speak Swedish and only understand a very minimal amount from when I did Duolingo, I can't understand what they're saying but I'm guessing it's a little bit about the history of the song and how it became My Love, My Life...?

Still, if you listen closely you can hear the demo track and make out the lyrics.  A very kind soul on YouTube did reconstruct the song by filtering out the talking so you only hear the track, but that video has sadly been removed from YouTube so I don't have any way of sharing it.  But here are the lyrics mostly transcribed if you're interested.  It's not perfect or complete as it is hard to hear but I did the best I could.

Verse 1:

We wandered aimlessly
Strolled through Paris in the night, you and me
Oh, and we walked along the Seine
Now I have ????
I was so sad when I had to say

Chorus:

This is my last night in France
Monsieur, monsieur
So tonight is our last dance
Monsieur, monsieur
And tomorrow at the station
End of my vacation
When we say our adieu

This is my last night in France
Monsieur, monsieur
And it`s been a short romance
Monsieur, monsieur
But it`s something to remember
A gray day in December
Now I think I love you monsieur
Yes I think I love you

Verse 2: 

We walked down to the ...???
And I tried to put tomorrow away
Oh, my .....?????
But in my heart I knew
Nothing has changed, nothing I could do

 

Anyways, you can listen to the full A For Agnetha radio documentary below, though I have it linked to the section with Monsieur, Monsieur,  If you wanna try transcribing it yourself, please be my guest!