Song Analysis - Hamlet III

Appearing at around the 12:23 mark in ABBA Undeleted is a very fun unreleased track titled Hamlet III. Recorded around August 1978, the track, which had the working titles of "Mountain Top" and "Dr.Claus Von Hamlet Nos. 1, 2 and 3" starts as a fun instrumental with fun guitar and keyboard playing, and is a really fun melody that clearly meant a lot to Bjorn and Benny, as they seemed to desperately want to find a way to use the melody in an ABBA song.  Then, at 13:30, the song switches from the fun, fast paced energetic track to a beautiful track sang by Agnetha and Frida in unison on top of lovely piano playing and at a much slower pace.  

 The lyrics are centered around when the seasons change to autumn, the air get colder, the leaves start to fall to the ground, the weather is gray and rainy, and it gives the narrator a bittersweet reminder of a previous autumn, when the narrator was in a relationship and things were happy before ending in heartbreak.  Based off the line, "So sad and kind of bitter sweet, and the memories filled with tears, and I feel my heart will break.  Guess it all was my mistake," makes me thing that the relationship had been good at the time that previous autumn, but it all went sour pretty quickly afterward.  Either the narrator had decided to break things off even though things were good, and that was their mistake, or the entire relationship was just bad and the narrator deems the entire relationship as a mistake.  

Despite that, the narrator remembers all the little details, how the winds were blowing through the trees, and how the rain fell on their partner's face, what the rain drops felt like.  How they laughed, and what a good time it was.  The last line of the short ~1:10 snippet is, "I never loved you more than on those happy autumn days."  

Seasons is a topic that shows up frequently throughout ABBA's songs, the first instance being Hasta Manana from 1974, and the obviously Summer Night City, but the topic of seasons began to increase more and more from Hamlet onwards, appearing in quite a few tracks from the Visitors album.  Regardless, this song, Hamlet, as some of the most vivid imagery in terms of describing the seasonal conditions.  Bjorn, who was writing most of the lyrics solo at this point, really manage to paint a vivid picture of what the narrator of the song sees and feels so perfectly, and I can not get over this track.  Even though it is so short, it is quite lovely, and Agnetha and Frida also manage to capture that bittersweet and somber feelings of recalling these memories of a happier time.  

Unfortunately, Hamlet never got finished, but Bjorn and Benny still wanted to find a use for it.  In March 1980, during rehearsals for ABBA's Japanese tour, at the 18:20 mark in the 1980 ABBA in Japan segment, Benny can be heard playing the melody on his keyboard.   Later, in June, the boys tried to reuse bits and pieces of the melody in yet another unreleased demo from 1980, Burning My Bridges.  

By 1981, the song acquired the title Lottis Schottis, and Benny even played the track on his accordion during the filming of the Dick Cavett Meets ABBA special from 1981, but it was not included in the broadcast.

Anyways, ultimately the song found its place on Benny's Klinga Mina Klockor album from 1987.  

Though interestingly, there is this video of Benny and Bjorn even, playing the song on a TV show in 1985. :D

I like all the different variations of the song, Benny's official one from 1987 is really great, and his whole 1987 album is good too, but ultimately my top favorite of all of them is the 1978 one with Agnetha and Frida.  They just complete the song. :)