Song Analysis - Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)

 In the late parts of August and Early September, ABBA began working on what would become their newest single, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).  As we all know, ABBA liked to include something new and never heard before during their tours.  During ABBA's 1974-75 tour, they would perform new and/or unreleased tracks like Hey, Hey Helen, I've Been Waiting For You, Intermezzo No. 1, and So Long.  For the 1977 tour, there was the whole Girl With The Golden Hair segment with new songs that had never heard before as well as the not-overly serious track I Am An A.  And for the 1979 tour, ABBA would debut Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!, I'm Still Alive, and The Way Old Friends Do.  (And as we all know, this way of thinking of having to include something new for a concert/tour is the whole basis for ABBA's I Still Have Faith In You and Don't Shut Me Down, released in 2021.)

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! is quite a unique track in a sense that it's sort of it's own unique music style.  It carries forward some of the disco elements from some of the tracks on Voulez-Vous, as in it has some strings and is quite a dance-able track, and it features more "mature" lyrics, but at the same time, it doesn't sound at all like the Voulez-Vous tracks.  Even though on more modern versions of the Voulez-Vous album, like the 2001 CD remasters, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! is included as a bonus track (same with Summer Night City), it really doesn't sound like any of the tracks on that album and stands out as its own unique song.  

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) on the surface, at least to me, seems like just a song about someone pining for the attention that comes with having a man to "take the shadows away", but it also seems to be about someone who is quite lonely and desperate.  Similar to If It Wasn't For The Nights which is about someone who finds life so lonely and not really worth living due to the loneliness of the evening times, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! is essentially those exact feeling of being alone in your flat, mindlessly watching TV to try and get through the loneliness and depression, and just feeling like there is truly no one out there.  So like, lyrics-wise, it's basically If It Wasn't For The Nights part 2.  

And in typical ABBA style, all of these depressed, gloomy, lonely lyrics are set to an extremely dance-able and upbeat track.  Because that's what ABBA do, haha.  They make depression and loneliness sound  FUN!  Haha jk.

Seeing as ABBA had already filmed the music video for this song on September 5th, 1979, they somehow managed to record this song in just under a week, yet their vocals don't sound rushed at all.  We've got those layers upon layers of vocal harmonies throughout the chorus, and even in the instrumental break, you've got some almost heavenly choral vocals from Agnetha and Frida hidden in the mix that when isolated sound so beautiful.  While Bjorn and Benny typically would record some background harmonies and backing vocals, by this point in ABBA's career their vocal additions had significantly decreased, and if they are in this song, I cannot hear them.  Agnetha's vocal performance is superb as well, and she not only hit that high note so effortlessly in the studio, she also managed to do it three times in one performance every night live in concert!  And there are plenty of bootleg and official audios from throughout the 1979 tour to prove that she sounded amazing.  

During the song's live performance, Frida would use the instrumental break to showcase her own dances, something that she very much liked to do, and it's honestly so fun to see Frida just having fun, dancing her heart out.

For ABBA's Spanish album, the song was recorded in Spanish, titled Dame! Dame! Dame! and well, I'm not going to say they didn't put their all into the Spanish album, but dare I say this version of the song definitely seems a lot more rushed and low-effort.  For example, in the chorus, Agnetha and Frida didn't record as many layers of harmony, and the track is left feeling kinda empty, and also Agnetha's vocals sound a lot more harsh and rough.  Which is fine, just in comparison to the English version, it's quite the contrast.

Anyways, the lyrics are roughly translated through Google Translate as follows:

Verse 1: The watch, it's already struck midnight and again I found that only the TV accompanies me.  blowing of that wind outside, live the desolation. My heart oppresses me with anguish.  

Pre-Chorus: There is nothing but loneliness, no one, not even for mercy

Chorus:  Give me, give me, give me love tonight.  Somebody help me to erase the shadows.  Give me, give me, give me love tonight.  Until dawn, see the day brighten

Verse 2: There are so many with great luck and fortune, everything they can get. So different from what I have to live, I find myself bored tonight, and the great darkness, it is my always obliged friendship.   

Pre-Chorus: There is nothing but loneliness no one, not even for mercy.

Chorus

Pre-Chorus:  There is nothing but loneliness No one, no mercy

Chorus

ABBA did lip-sync to Dame! Dame! Dame! once on Spanish TV in 1980, making that its only performance, and after the 1979/80 tour, ABBA performed the song one final time as part of the Dick Cavett Meets ABBA TV special in 1981. I just have to say it is so funny to me to see them all standing so still on stage when singing this very upbeat song, especially when you compare how they were all over the stage during their 1979/80 tour lol.  However they fully made up for it when the ABBA-tars perform the song in the ABBA Voyage show as the performance is fully choreographed and Frida even gets her instrumental dance break lol.

Anyways, the song is good, I love it a ton as I do with like all of ABBA's songs, and it turned out to be a fairly popular song as well, reaching number one in at least seven countries!