ABBA single by single thread

Westlife were massive in the UK in the late 90s/early 00s. They had fourteen number ones!

Also I'm glad you're enjoying Felt and that you've bought one of their albums already. I particularly like their album "Forever Breathes the Lonely Word".

 

Ms Goodrem just played Olivia Newton-John in a horrible looking Australian TV movie. Despite looking or sounding nothing like her and being a foot taller! I can’t wait for this to be screened on Channel 5 here. It can only be Channel 5, can’t it?!

 

I didn’t realise they had 14 number ones.

They really were bigger than ABBA.

 

I don't know too much about the charts at that time but I think it was a period where the number one spot was turning over really quickly. There were 42 number ones in 2000 alone. So if that sort of thing was happening in the late 70s/early 80s I bet ABBA would have gotten 14 number ones too.

 

Maxinne Hernando2 years ago
The message of this song inspire people from different walks of life.. even small children will love it..Perhaps when my time comes to go back to heaven, i won't be afraid anymore because i know all the angels will be there.. Congratulations to Westlife.. .They're one of the best singers!!

Billions of years of evolution, and this is the result. Mindless screaming at a load of teenagers in white clothes. Is there something good about teenagers in white clothes? At what point is this good or clever?
The fact that they can get away with this and people scream at it destroys your faith in humanity.

 

People have always and will always scream at young guys who sing. The fact that it’s Westlife in white clothes sat on stools makes not a scrap of difference. Forget not that people screamed louder for the Bay City Rollers in the 70s!

 

Even the Bay City Rollers were better than Westlife. At least they had a shred of character.

 

Apparently named after the Joe Cocker song which is about a lady's naughty bits.

Woman of the country now that I found you
Longing for your soft and fertile delta
And I whisper sighs to satisfy your longing
For the warm and tender shelter of my body

Please don't ask how many times I found you
Standing wet and naked in the garden
And I think of days
And different ways I held you
We were closely touching, yes our heart was beating

 

I know of these guys from my like of 70's pop groups! S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night! Guess they were like an early boy band, but then one could argue that the Raspberries were a boy band too, and gee, ABBA had a couple of boys in it. It's all relative. Good music is good music, regardless of who's mouth it comes out of. Thank you all again for the SHMF Ongoing Education Program, British Division.

 

Subtle, wasn't he?

 

I suppose it wasn't on GHV2 because it wasn't yet a single at that point, it may be that they decided to release it as a single at the eleventh hour, who knows. And yet it did appear on the Spanish/South American versions of GHV2 (sung in spanish of course) Replacing Angeleyes at the end of Side A.

 

"I Have a Dream" was never released in the United States as a single, at least not in English. Atlantic Records in Canada did release "I Have a Dream" on 45, with the same B-side, the live "Take a Chance on Me," but it has a catalog number outside the usual Atlantic 3000 series that it shared with the U.S. (MS 5434).

In the UK, it was timed as a potential Christmas #1 hit, but it came up one position short. As a resident of the States, I find the British obsession with the Christmas #1 song to be interesting; I often hear of how certain parties have tried to game the results in recent years. If my reading is correct, this uniquely U.K. thing started in 1973, when three different Christmas 45s battled for the top spot at the end of the year ("Merry Xmas Everybody" by Slade, "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" by Wizzard, and "Step Into Christmas" by Elton John). In the U.S., no one cares what is on top of the singles chart at Christmas; in fact, from 1976 through 1991, Billboard froze its singles charts during the Christmas/New Year holiday because there was so little activity.

With "Chiquitita" still on the charts as 1979 ended, Atlantic waited until the new year to release its next single, which turned out to be "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)," the new song on the Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 album (if you don't include "Summer Night City," which was new to the U.S.)

As several other U.S. residents have mentioned, it is true of me, too; I never once heard "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" on the radio in 1980. I'm not even sure I heard it at all until I got the ABBA Gold CD. It's a really catchy song; that intro sure did hook me. It became ingrained in me enough that when Madonna sampled it on "Hung Up" years later, I knew instantly that it had come from an ABBA song. I did have to double-check to hear which one, though.

A test pressing from Specialty was dated January 24, 1980; this has the handwritten title "Gimme Gimme" to save space. The 45cat listing has its release date as March 1980; it was definitely earlier than that, as reviews appeared in the trades in February.

Once again, Billboard placed "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" in its Recommended list in the Top Single Reviews column of February 23, 1980. In the same issue, likely independently of that column, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" was one of the two listings in the small, usually ignored "Chart Bound" section in the upper right corner of the Hot 100. Both of the other trades reviewed the song in the February 16 issues; Cash Box listed it among its Singles to Watch and wrote, "Already an international hit, this track from ABBA's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 is yet another exercise of sparkling euro-pop, with the slightest hint of boogie bottom to give the song an edge. Electronic keyboard work is top-notch here and the harmonies are superb, as usual. Look for pop, dance action." Record World wrote, "A captivating chorus hook is nailed down by the prominent dance beat on this previously unreleased single from their Greatest Hits Vol. 2 LP." Based on where the three magazines placed their reviews, none of them were overly optimistic about the song's chances. But neither they nor Atlantic could have imagined what would happen.

Crickets.

"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was such a colossal flop that it didn't even make the Record World Top 150, the industry's largest singles chart. (Both "People Need Love" and "Ring Ring" made that chart.) It didn't make Bubbling Under in Billboard, either. Cash Box had temporarily discontinued its Coming Up chart with positions 101-125 in this era, not that it would have mattered, evidently. Why did it fail so miserably? Sorry, I don't even have any good theories on this one. Was it too disco in an anti-disco period of radio?

Atlantic 3652 has "The King Has Lost His Crown" on the B-side. It was not issued with a picture sleeve. As usual, stock copies came from Specialty (SP) on vinyl and Monarch (MO) on styrene. I think this was the first time that even the stock copies have an edited version on them (3:35, matrix number ST-A-37991}. In the past, stock copies had the full version even when the radio version was edited ("The Name of the Game," "Take a Chance on Me," "Voulez-Vous," "Chiquitita"). Promo copies have the 3:35 edit on one side and the LP version (4:45, ST-A-37804) on the other; they also came from both SP and MO.

 

What a strange coincidence that 'I Have a Dream' spent four weeks at number 2 in the UK behind another song that also features a children's choir, Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall'.

 

The remake by Westlife achieved something that ABBA's version did not: it became the UK Christmas No.1 (20 years later).

The Westlife remake was a double A-side with a cover version of Terry Jack's 'Seasons in the Sun'. It was the last UK number one of the 1990s as well as the first one of the 2000s.

It became Benny and Björn's 12th UK number one as songwriters (9 #1s with ABBA, 'I Know Him So Well' from 'Chess' in 1985, Erasure's 'ABBA Esque EP' in 1992).

 

ABBA never shot a video for 'I Have a Dream'. A live performance from London's Wembley Arena Stadium was used as the promo on the 'ABBA Gold' VHS video and DVD.

They did, however, shoot a video for the Spanish version of the song, 'Estoy Soñando'. It was recorded at the same day as the promo video to 'Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!' (5 September 1979). They are wearing the same clothes in both videos.

 

In 1981, a remake of 'I Have a Dream' by Cristy Lane peaked at #17 on the US Country Chart.

 

'I Have a Dream' is by far my least favourite one of ABBA's big hits. It's actually not a bad song but too boring and the children's choir ruins it. Maybe a different arrangement would have worked better.

 

I far prefer "Chiquitita". This one is hella annoying. It's a pretty tune I suppose but something about the production makes it grate.

Finally! Someone in Nashville caught on that most ABBA songs could be easily transformed into country songs.

WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG????

 

"I Have a Dream" is one of the very few ABBA "hit" songs that I'll skip over. I can listen to it once in awhile, but it's not a favorite at all.

 

I always think of "I Have a Dream" as being fairly inoffensive and bland, but my iTunes count doesn't lie. I haven't played the song once in at least four years. I've played everything else on Voulez-Vous multiple times, but zero plays since I upgraded my ABBA library to lossless in 2014. Obviously, I pressed the skip button every time it came on, even on my iPod in the car.

To be fair, it does have exactly one play on the Thank You for the Music set. I must not have been paying attention.

It's rare that I actually skip a song on an album that I generally like. Having owned the album since it was their newest album, I'm sure I've played it plenty of times over the years, but I obviously don't care to hear it ever again. Usually, these discussions here inspire me to go listen to a song with fresh ears, but I'm not feeling that right now.

The Westlife version (which I actually do own on a hits collection of theirs) isn't any better. I just don't care for the song.

 

I like "I HAVE A DREAM". I really do. I just think it stands out like a sore thumb on "VOULEZ-VOUS", much more so than "CHIQUITITA". I love the intro of the song, and the melody itself is pleasant and, as many of you have mentioned, inoffensive and a bit bland. And it goes on for far too long. Other than that, it´s a worthy song on a good album. I never expected them to lift it as a single, and certainly not to join "CHIQUITITA" as the biggest hit from the album!

But I like it. I tend to skip it when I play the album, but I would not go as far as to say that i don´t like the song. Find me in the right mood, and I might even love it.

And it´s worth noticing that Bjørn & Benny said that they did they song "because we liked it, no matter what kind of songs the current taste in music told us we should make. That one was for us." That speaks volumes. They probably felt shoehorned into making disco songs that could please their younger fans. (Bjørn quite liked them - Benny not so much.)

 

I think I have it too on an ABBAMANIA disc from the UK, with stars from the UK doing ABBA songs. I probably never listened to that track - I bought it for The Corrs doing "The Winner Takes It All".

 

Next up on ABBA single by single thread, "Britain's Favorite Break-Up Song." *In the voice of Casey Kasem*

(Posting early, because I will see this last, being out in the middle of the Pacific!) "Please" avoid responses until after our UK Thread Master has started the next single. Thank you. It is not my intention to sabotage the great work he's done so far!
Forgive me, Haristar!



It's at 36:55, if you want to skip to it. Wish I would of been old enough to remember this great show and have listened to a full countdown of songs!!!

 

A children's choir - yuck! I don't even want to think about this song so I'll leave it there. Except to say that I Have A Dream did not bother the New Zealand singles charts at all.

 

Interesting. I have an ABBA Mania CD, but it starts with Belinda Carlisle doing "Dancing Queen" and has no crossover with this CD, as far as I can tell. Yours looks interesting. I'll have to check it out. I find that I often like covers of ABBA songs.