Song Analysis - The King Has Lost His Crown

 Frida is an insanely incredible and talented vocalist, but if there's something she is really, really good at, it's her sarcastic and snarky vocals as can be heard in The King Has Lost His Crown.  Recorded in August, 1978, the song is about a guy who has just lost his girlfriend, and suddenly, his entire life has been thrown upside down.  

 In a way, the lyrics seem to convey sympathy for this guy, the "king" even though he's not an actual king, but the way things are phrased and how Frida sings it, you can tell she's sort of making fun of him and belittle his situation a bit.  At least that's how I've always interpreted it.  Specifically the lines, "how does it feel? I guess it hurts your pride," and "Disaster and disgrace! The king has lost his crown!" kinda of give of mocking vibes, as if he's being so over dramatic over the breakup and Frida and Agnetha are laughing at him.  

The guy is basically acting like a king who has lost his crown, and now he doesn't act like himself, when all that happened is that he was broken up with.  Honestly based off the first line of the song, "I believe your new girl turned you down, and they say, she's pushing you around," makes me thing that this is the type of guy who feels like he can't anything without having a girl in his life.  He can't function without having a significant other but also "being the man" in situation and "being the one in control," and as a result, he doesn't seem to have a very good track record of keeping a girlfriend, so he gets new girl after new girl after new girl.  But then this time, his newest girl pushes back, she doesn't let him have the control, she's the one who puts her foot down an actively doesn't let him feel like he's in control, and that just totally ruins him.  Someone who doesn't put up with his garbage personality?? :O :O :O :O

And yeah, that's my interpretation of the song.  I wasn't there when Bjorn and Benny wrote the song, with the lyrics mostly written by Bjorn, so I can't know 100% what it was about, but also it probably wasn't based off any true facts either.  Remember, unless an ABBA song is explicitly mentioned to be inspired by real life, it isn't the true story. :)  

While Frida sings the lead throughout the song with her amazing sarcastic vocals, Agnetha joins her in the second half of the verses and choruses.  Much like a lot of the songs from the Voulez-Vous album, I don't hear much of Bjorn and Benny in the backing vocals, but I'm sure they're buried in their somewhere.  The backing track with Benny's powerful synths also give off that almost vengeful feel to the song.  And I just love it.  (I loved this song so much that when I was still making ABBA animations on Lego Digital Designer back in my early days of YouTube, I had to do an animation of this song.)

Sadly, ABBA did not perform this song ever except for an early mix of it in the ABBA in Switzerland TV special, but again, their performance of it is really, really good, one of my favorite of all their performances. 

Also fun fact, this is the only other ABBA song to mention a title of monarchy in the song title, the other being Dancing Queen.