Song Analysis - Lovers (Live A Little Longer)

On June 5th, 1978, ABBA began working on another track for the up and coming studio album that so far was taking a long time to come up with.  Bjorn and Benny found inspiration quite low at this time, and the only song from these early writing and recording sessions to even appear on the final album was this song, Lovers (Live A Little Longer.)  

Up until this point, it can be argued that ABBA's music was mostly clean, and people of all age groups could comfortably ABBA's entire catalog, whereas now ABBA were stepping into more "explicitly" sexual themes in their songs with a new level of maturity.  I'm digressing a bit, but as people ABBA had given off "clean" energy - two couples, one married, the other engaged - and they didn't take any drugs and were overall very chill compared to other stars of their same era.  However they have plenty of "dirty" and also "mature" themed songs, and by that I mean literal mature things.  Like Knowing Me Knowing You, a song about two adults with children, who are divorcing.  To name a few "dirty" songs off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Honey Honey, Rock Me, and arguably, Gonna Sing You My Love Song and Why Did It Have To Be Me.   And on the mature side, we have One Man, One Woman and Knowing Me, Knowing You.  So like, in my humble opinion, ABBA have never been "clean & innocent," so I'm not surprised or concerned that the album Voulez-Vous has more sexual themes.

Anyways, Lovers (Live A Little Longer) is said to be a song inspired a headline that Bjorn may have seen.  I'm not 100% certain on the validity of that, but regardless, in the song, the narrator is sharing this incredible news that she just read in the paper that day, that a physician has made the claim that love is a longevity factor, and Lovers who Make Love together will live longer than the average human who does not!  So, the narrator of the song is super hyped by this and is like, "alright, let's start right away!" 

Honestly the song to me always seemed kinda not overly serious, a bit like "Two For The Price Of One" and "Crazy World," like it's not to be taken all that seriously and is kinda funny, but the production of the song is quite serious.  Like Frida, who sings lead on this song, has these extremely sensual vocals and she sings so well, capturing the "matureness" of the song perfectly well. Agnetha has these incredible backing vocals are superb.  She has some backing vocals that are oddly not written down anywhere in the official lyrics, and it's really hard to decipher what she's singing in the second verse, but I think they are Verse 1: "Ooh, you know that" and Verse 2: "I'm exploding" or "aaaah, please don't wait" and no one really knows that they are.  I'd really love it if Bjorn and Benny could clear it up for us someday hahahahhaha. 

There are also some really really really fun backing vocals in the chorus, which are literally just "lovers-live-a-little-longer-lovers-live-a-little-longer" over and over again and they make it sound so easy but I bet that was so hard to record in the studio hahahahaha.  Speaking of backing vocals, I don't really hear Bjorn and Benny anywhere on this track, except maybe in the second verse when they say "Making love is a dynamite drug, baby, so why don't we start right away?" as on the phrase "Making love" there's some added backing vocals, and maybe the boys added to that?  But again, I don't know.  

Also, just before the bridge, there are some lovely "aaaah-aaah-aah-aaaahs" in typical ABBA-style vocals from Agnetha and Frida, just the two of them singing in harmony and idk, just that one small part before the bridge is like my favorite part of the song.  I also really love the extra little "yeah"s at the end of the last chorus before the song ends.

Contrary to public belief, ABBA are not a Disco band.  They are a Pop band.  But they dabbled in many, many different styles.  Tropical Loveland is sort of ABBA's take on Reggae, I Saw It In The Mirror is their attempt at R&B, and so on and so forth.  The Voulez-Vous album contains songs that are very much inspired by Disco which was kinda popular at that time, but in my opinion, only songs like "As Good As New," "The King Has Lost His Crown," "If It Wasn't For The Nights", "Lovers (Live A Little Longer)," and "Kisses Of Fire" give disco vibes, and by that I mean ABBA's interpretation of Disco.  That leaves 5 other songs on the album that are not disco.  So yes they dabbled in Disco, but that doesn't make them a disco band.

Despite the fact that Lovers (Live A Little Longer) is a very good song, ABBA never performed it live in concert.  However, an early mix of the song did make its debut in February, 1979, along with a couple of other songs from the Voulez-Vous album.   I love this TV special, and this performance as well is a standout for me.  I love their costumes as well, being among my personal top favorite ABBA outfits.  This song is just so fun, and they captured that enjoyment in their performance perfectly!