Song Analysis - When I Kissed The Teacher

So far on Arrival we have two songs about youthful experiences, Dancing Queen, and When I Kissed The Teacher.  Recorded in June, 1976, This song is about someone who has a major crush on her math teacher.  She dreams about him every night, and can't stop thinking about him at all.  Like he is all she can think about at all times of the day, and one day she just can't stop herself and kisses him in class.

My favorite thing about this song is the fact that it's written from just the student's perspective, and  she has these kinda immature statements like, "one of these days, gonna show him I care, gonna teach him a lesson alright," but all of this is from her perspective.  The teacher NEVER reciprocates her feelings, never does anything to tell her that omg yes he will make all her dreams come true because it's wrong, creepy, and illegal.  All he does in the song is blush a bit when she first kissed him and just smile a little bit after the fact, and that's it.  The student hasn't done anything wrong to have a crush on him and then act on her impulses and kiss him when he was leaning over her desk and helping her understand geometry, and it is the teacher/adult in the situation's responsibility to make sure it ends there and nothing more comes of it.  And this song is just that.  Especially with the phrasing, "but then he just smiled," all he did was smile.  That's all.  And that's the end of it.  Doesn't mean it made the student's crush fade at all, in fact now she thinks she's in the seventh heaven and really wants to "hug, hug him", but that's okay.  

I love this song a lot.  It's very cheerful, happy, and I think perfectly captures the immaturity and youthfulness of the narrator, and also what it's like to have a really intense crush.  I love the acoustic guitar intro, and the happy instruments throughout the rest of the song, the incredible backing vocals that I think are, "hug, hug him, wanna kiss him, wanna kiss him, wanna hug, hug him, wanna kiss him, wanna kiss him, wanna" etc.....  Both Agnetha and Frida sing most of the song together, but Agnetha sings the lead on the chorus, with some absolutely beautiful harmonies behind her.  This such is just so fun, energetic, enjoyable, and also the outro of the song is amazing as well.  

ABBA performed this song a good number of times, once with it's own music video for the ABBA-Dabba-Doo tv-special, at least three more times for TV perfomances, and then also during the 1977 tour, and thus included in ABBA the Movie.  We have a lot of bootleg audios from the 1977 tour and they sound incredible live.  They even have a bit of an extended outro during the live performances, repeating "Everybody screamed, when I kissed the teacher, and they must have thought they dreamed, they dreamed, they dreamed.....".  Really pretty.

Anyways, here's a compilation of all of their performances.  I love how Frida has so much energy during this song, especially in the outro.  Really, really fun performances. :)