Song Analysis - That's Me

 I used to have hard time understanding the meaning of That's Me, but I think I kind of get it now.   It's a super fun sounding song, with beautiful joint vocals by Agnetha and Frida, some lovely harmonies and "oooooo" and "aaaaa-aaaa-aaa-aaaa"s during the verses and between the last chorus and last verse.  You even get some fun backing vocals from Bjorn and Benny during the bridge??, singing "na-na-na-na-nothings".  

The song is about a girl who is not like other girls.  She's jealous, she's proud, she'd emotional, and she's not mild or meek.  It seems she wants to find true love someday, and she refuses to be just a man's toy - she wants actual, real love.  But, because she's loud, she's different, and she's Carrie-not-the-kind-of-girl-you'd-marry.  She's not afraid of being single, but she admits that it's getting a big lonely.  But she won't settle just for some guy because there's an expectation that women must get married.  When she finds the right one, even if it's sort of out of the ordinary and unusual, like an eagle flying with a dove, she'll be happy.  But until then, she just accepts that she's not your ordinary girl, and that's okay.

The song kind of reminds me of I'm Just A Girl from ABBA's first album three years prior, but more like how it's the complete opposite.  The girl in that song is extremely love sick, wants to find her true love, but she's too ordinary and unexemplary.  Nothing stands out about her, and she feels like she'll never find the one.  But then one day she does, and now she feels special.  and it's such a sweet song and message.  However, Carrie from That's Me is not ordinary, she does not blend in, and she stands out too much.  But she's confident she will find the one.  And maybe she will someday.

But it just has me wondering, if the girl from I'm just a girl is too average and Carrie from That's Me is too exemplary, what do you have to be to find true love...? :'D

I like the song, I like the message.  It's a very interesting and fascinating concept, and possibly pretty feminist for the time?  Especially the line, "but I’m not a man’s toy, I’ll never be."  

ABBA performed the song during the 1977 tour, as the second track in the setlist, and while we only have bootleg recordings of it, they still sound amazing.  However ABBA only "performed" the track twice, one for TV and the other as a music video.  And the music video was mostly recycling old footage with hardly anything new.  And the one tv show they performed on has a lot of certainly talented but very distracting dancers lol.