ABBA single by single thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Haristar, Apr 7, 2018.

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  1. Haristar

    Haristar Apollo C. Vermouth Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    I think the production messes up this song for me. It's a decent song other than that.

    I love the chorus with Bjorn and Benny on lead vocals.
     
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  2. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    Sounds about right, too. Using stats from the Billboard Hot 100...

    In the U.S., before "Summer Night City":
    11 Hot 100 hits
    10 top 40
    8 top 20
    3 top 10
    1 #1

    In the U.S., after "Summer Night City":
    9 Hot 100 hits
    4 top 40
    2 top 20
    1 top 10
    0 #1
     
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  3. MCT1

    MCT1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Worcester, MA
    I believe that we're following the order of songs on this 2-CD compilation (presumably excluding the two bonus tracks that appear out of chronological order at the end of each CD):

    The Definitive Collection (ABBA album) - Wikipedia

    We're currently on song #18 of the first CD. To make a long story short, songs 1 through 4, which were all recorded pre-"Waterloo", were never hits in the U.S. Post-"Waterloo", songs 7, 17 and 18 weren't released as singles in the U.S. Up to this point, I think all of the other songs we've covered hit the U.S. charts.
     
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  4. Haristar

    Haristar Apollo C. Vermouth Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    And in the UK:

    Before Summer Night City:
    11 Top 40s
    9 Top 20s
    9 Top 10s
    7 #1s

    After Summer Night City
    14 Top 40s
    10 Top 20s
    10 Top 10s
    2 #1s
     
  5. MCT1

    MCT1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Worcester, MA
    At the risk of drifting too far off topic, do you know what the record was before "Love Machine"?
     
  6. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Ring Ring
    Here in the U.S., this didn't get any attention until after "Waterloo" was a hit. From that point, ABBA was all over the easy-listening stations.

    Waterloo
    I instantly loved this song with its highly layered and compressed keyboards and guitars. The band had a special compressed sound that made them so unique. Steve even did a thread on it many years ago. The top 40 stations loved it.

    Honey Honey
    I even loved this song, though I only heard it on, again, easy listening stations during the morning.

    So Long
    Again, I only heard it on easy listening stations. I guess top 40 radio had other more interesting things to play. I don't like this song quite as much as the first three I listed, but I don't turn it off when it comes on my stereo.

    One of these singles had "Rock Me" on the b-side. I remember radio played that too.

    I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
    Regulated to easy-listening radio again. By this time it was the spring of 1975. A big first year for ABBA in the U.S. I like the melody, but this song bores me. I usually skip it.

    SOS
    This put them back on the top of the U.S, charts in the fall of '75, and top 40 radio wore it out. I'm still sick of hearing it after all these decades. I often skip it too. I find the high compression on the lead vocal interesting.

    Mama Mia
    Again, regulated to easy listening radio. You know, this may be why a lot of the rock fans on this forum say they never heard ABBA much, or didn't know they were big. Perhaps it's because they were not exposed to their music because of their choice of radio stations. Totally different audience. Top 40 radio was much kinder to Carpenters, The Captain & Tennille, Bread, and Barry Manilow during this time.

    Fernando
    I like this song, especially since I finally listened to the lyrics and found that it is not a love song by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, I like a good love song, but not too many, OK? The interpretation is somewhat loose, but it could either be about the Spanish-American War or immigrants migrating into the U.S. for a better life. Could this have been ABBA's most political song? Mexican immigration was becoming a major issue by this time.

    More later...
     
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  7. bare trees

    bare trees Senior Member

    "Summer Night City" was released as a single in Canada in late 1978. It topped out at 90 on the RPM charts in February, 1979. That might explain why I didn't know the song until I got Greatest Hits Volume 2 in December, 1979 as a birthday gift. In any case, "Summer Night City" hooked me when I first heard it. The intro caught my attention and I loved those off time shots at the end of the verses.
     
  8. gomen ne

    gomen ne -

    Location:
    London
    Ooooohhh! I love this track SO much! I loved it from the first time I heard it. I don't appreciate the way it sort of takes a back seat to other tracks. As if it was a mistake.
    From the moment Benny's keyboard gliss starts it off it's a faultless disco hit. A bit different to previous Abba, and it's up and demanding you dance to it. The vocal arrangement is great - it has a lot of Bjorn but it works well. It's mature Abba having a night out. It always makes me feel like drinking cocktails on a Mediterranean seafront in the evening and watching the sunset - the promo video is superb - everyone looks happy and full of life. I like the lighting a lot.
    (yeah - I know it's probably Stockholm but I've never been there).
    This should have been the lead single on Voulez Vous. As Frank Carson would have said were he still alive: It's a cracker.

    Totally agree - I can't get inside the minds of some people. I hope karma is real.
     
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  9. gomen ne

    gomen ne -

    Location:
    London
    I think they've all had a few in that video. Frida and Benny can hardly stand up by the end. Great!
     
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  10. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    "Summer Night City" came within a whisker of following up "Take a Chance on Me" in the United States. But just as records started to roll off the presses, Atlantic abruptly canceled the 45 and ordered all existing copies, none of which had left the plants yet, destroyed.

    To these ears, it is ABBA's first true disco record -- more so than "Dancing Queen." Disco hadn't completely overwhelmed the U.S. singles charts the way it would in early 1979, as dance music still co-existed with rock, soul, mid-tempo pop, and ballads in the top 40. Some of the bigger U.S. dance hits of the time were "Boogie Oogie Oogie" by A Taste of Honey, "Get Off" by Foxy, "Dance (Disco Heat)" by Sylvester, and the autumn's biggest dance hit, "MacArthur Park" by Donna Summer. "Le Freak" by Chic, one of the biggest hits of the entire decade of the 1970s, wasn't far behind. In that climate, "Summer Night City" would have sounded good on the radio in the fall of 1978. It also would have been a big club hit, and perhaps a 12-inch single could have been arranged.

    So what happened? All I have is what I think is a solid hypothesis.

    ---

    In early September 1978, Atlantic was still dithering about whether to release "Eagle" as a third single from The Album. ABBA was coming off its biggest selling, and second-highest charting, single, and Atlantic had been kicking "Eagle" around since May. As "Take a Chance on Me" left the charts, still no new single was announced.

    Then, circumstances forced Atlantic's hand. "Summer Night City" came out in Europe in early September, and several key radio stations got their hands on copies from the UK Epic label. Defying a possible cease-and-desist order, these stations started to play "Summer Night City" as the new ABBA single to excellent response from listeners. Atlantic's decision had been made for it.

    Even though it was a non-album single, with no new ABBA LP on the immediate horizon, the label prepared to meet the demand with its own 45. It received both sides from Polar, including the medley of "Pick a Bale of Cotton/On Top of Old Smokey/Midnight Special" for the B-side. (This had been on a 1975 album released only in West Germany.) Atlantic gave the masters the matrix numbers of ST-A-35671 and ST-A-35672 and assigned a catalog number (3515). A test pressing from Specialty, which was made on October 13, 1978 with a mono fold-down on one side and the stereo version on the other, was approved.

    And then -- this is speculation -- someone higher on the Atlantic food chain with a long memory listened more closely and said to himself, "Wait a minute... Stop the presses! We can't release this!"

    ---


    Before we continue with "Summer Night City," let's go back five years.

    In the spring of 1973, Atlantic had a red-hot soul act on its label, The Spinners (or, in the UK, the Detroit Spinners). After almost a decade as a third-tier act at Motown with only one significant pop hit ("It's a Shame" in 1970), they signed with Atlantic in 1972. Right out of the box, they had two #1 R&B and top-10 pop hits with "I'll Be Around" and "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love."

    Their next single was "One of a Kind (Love Affair)," which also seemed on the fast track to the top 10 on the pop charts. It did get to #1 R&B, but it stalled at #11 on the Hot 100. One of the reasons Atlantic thought it came up short: It had to re-service the promos because several radio stations thought Philippé Wynne, the Spinners' lead singer, was using a forbidden word right after the instrumental break --

    One of a kind love affair is
    Makes you want to love her
    You just gotta f*** her, yeah


    That's not really what he sang (at least, I don't think that's what he sang), but enough program directors heard that interpretation that they refused to play the record. In a panic, Atlantic quickly cut those three lines from the song. It sent brand-new promos labeled "New Version" to radio; it also replaced the original length with the revised version on stock 45s. (If you want to check your own 45, the original version has a matrix number of ST-A-26308 and a label time of 3:31; the "censored" version is ST-A-26436 and a label time of 3:20.) Over the years, roughly two of every three CD appearances of "One of a Kind (Love Affair)" are the edited version.

    Did that really slow the song's momentum? Perhaps. But Atlantic assumed it did, and that's what matters.

    ---

    Now, back to October 1978.

    When that anonymous label exec listened to "Summer Night City," he probably got into the beat and listened as the lyrics painted a scene that was sexy, even erotic, but not offensive. And then, as the song started to fade out, his ears perked up...

    "What did he say? Did he really just say 'F***ing in the moonlight'? "

    As much as others tried to convince him otherwise, that, just as was true during the rest of the song, the lyric was sung as "walking in the moonlight," the Atlantic exec with the long memory of "One of a Kind (Love Affair)" decided to put the kibosh on the single's release. He just didn't want to have to worry about PDs hearing the lyric the same way he did.

    Certainly, Atlantic could have created an earlier fade to eliminate the problem, but the mix was such that even some of the earlier occasions of "walking in the moonlight" could be misconstrued, especially with the line "love-making in the park" right after it.

    And so, "Summer Night City" literally entered the dustbin of Atlantic Records history, as whatever press run of promos and stock copies were ordered not to leave the pressing plant premises. The song wouldn't appear in the U.S. until the late-1979 album Greatest Hits, Vol. 2.

    ---

    The story doesn't quite end there.

    As mentioned, "Summer Night City" was issued in Canada on Atlantic 3515. Both stock copies and white-label promos exist; though the song wasn't a big hit, the 45 isn't hard to find.

    In the United States, meanwhile, someone at the PRC pressing plant in Richmond, Indiana (RI), surreptitiously kept some stock copies of the canceled single. Exactly how many copies were liberated is unknown. As 45s were assembled and shipped in boxes of 25, the employee could have saved a whole box, or just a few individual records.

    At least four RI copies of "Summer Night City"/"Medley" are in the hands of collectors. I've never seen one come up for auction, but they definitely exist, and are the rarest of all known Atlantic ABBA 45s. They'd probably sell for at least as much as that "Eagle" test pressing did in 2012. Here are the A and B sides:

    http://images.45cat.com/abba-summer-night-city-1978-46.jpg

    http://images.45cat.com/abba-summer-night-city-1978-47.jpg
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
  11. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    Two songs took 18 weeks to get to #1: "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" by Freddy Fender (1975) and "Theme from S.W.A.T" by Rhythm Heritage (1976).
     
  12. gomen ne

    gomen ne -

    Location:
    London
    Now that is annoying. Men in suits should not be able to interfere with an artist's work. He's deprived Americans of having a good time listening to that tune there.
     
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  13. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Wasn't familiar with this one until I picked up a second ABBA (two-disc) hits collection about a decade ago. I find this one really underwritten and kinda stereotypical (bad) late '70s disco.
     
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  14. gomen ne

    gomen ne -

    Location:
    London
    BTW - have you seen the prices the RSD18 splatter vinyl is going for? Try getting one for less than £50. Crazy. Just buy an original copy.
     
  15. John Adam

    John Adam An Introvert In Paradise

    Location:
    Hawaii
    The B-side (Medley) I believe is the only non Benny/Bjorn track ABBA ever recorded? Which in itself made this a collectible single.

    I think I came up with a very belated solution for a new Atlantic single in 1978. Being torn over the import play of Summer Night City, and still wanting to promote and presumably sell more copies of "The Album," I suggest they should of put out a double A side commercial and promo single of "Summer Night City/Eagle." Both in their edited forms with a great picture sleeve. This way they had their choice, or both!!! At very least a 12" single could of been released, the timing would of been right.

    It was a shame the US didn't get a single again until 1979. It kind of broke the momentum ABBA had going here, never to be truly regained here except with the exceptions of a couple of great singles. Atlantic seemed to have messed up a bit with the singles of ABBA. But it's a fun part of music history to examine and re-examine!
     
  16. John Adam

    John Adam An Introvert In Paradise

    Location:
    Hawaii
    The best story yet about the Atlantic Records handling of ABBA. Boy would I love to own one of those American 7" singles. I never knew it existed (as a single) here until this post! Going to have my degree in ABBA pretty soon!
     
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  17. John Adam

    John Adam An Introvert In Paradise

    Location:
    Hawaii
    Like ABBA was going to use the "F" word in one of their songs! :agree:
     
  18. cut to the chase

    cut to the chase Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    'Summer Night City' was ABBA's third and last number one single in their home country Sweden (after 'Ring Ring' and 'Dancing Queen').

    However, many songs that were released internationally didn't get a release in Sweden, like for example 'Knowing Me, Knowing You', 'Take a Chance On Me' or 'Gimme Gimme Gimme' (the latter still entered the Swedish charts, due to imports, and peaked at number 16).

    People in Sweden bought their albums which broke all sales records. Both 'Arrival' and 'The Album' sold more than 700k copies each, in a country with a population of 8.2 million people at the time!
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
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  19. bob60

    bob60 Forum Resident

    Location:
    London UK
    I have always loved this single, I see it as the halfway mark in their career, it fits nicely as the end of phase one and also fits perfectly as the beginning of phase two.
    For me Abba become much more grown up after this single, and I have to say I prefer phase one. There were still some great singles to come, but they would never seem as young, fun, happy and carefree again.
    For me this was the peak of Abba's imperial phase, even though it wasn't a no 1 hit.
     
  20. cut to the chase

    cut to the chase Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    Me too. Without the intro there's something missing, the beginning of the song sounds a bit odd.

     
  21. Bobby Morrow

    Bobby Morrow Senior Member

    The only “F” word they use is Fernando.

    :D
     
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  22. cut to the chase

    cut to the chase Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    The video is one of their best, the girls look so beautiful!

    [​IMG]
     
  23. cut to the chase

    cut to the chase Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    From Wikipedia:

    "The recording sessions for 'Summer Night City' began in early 1978. It had the working titles of "Kalle Sändare" and "Dancing in the Moonlight". ABBA's new recording studio, Polar Music Studio, had opened in May 1978, but had not been ready to use initially, so the primary backing track had been recorded at Metronome Studio. A 43-second ballad-style introduction to the song had been edited out to improve the overall quality, but nothing seemed to work.

    Allegedly, mixing the single took at least a week, far more than it took to mix any other track in ABBA's recording history. They felt something was wrong with the recording but couldn't put their finger on it. In the end, the song had an enormous amount of compression applied to it to give it a more "driving" sound. Agnetha has been quoted as saying she didn't like the song to start with, as she felt "it wasn't ABBA" but later on grew to like it.

    A reluctant ABBA decided to release "Summer Night City" as a single in September despite their disappointment with the track in its current form. The group still performed the song live on their 1979 world tour, though with the original introduction that had been removed from the studio recording.

    The previously unreleased version with the extended introduction was finally released as part of the box set 'Thank You for the Music' in 1994."
     
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  24. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    I saw that when I was trying to see if any of the rare Atlantic "Summer Night City" 45s had been sold at auction in recent years. If that RSD 45 truly was a limited edition of 2,000, fully 15 percent of them showed up on eBay since April.
     
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  25. cut to the chase

    cut to the chase Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    An interesting remake (if you're a metal fan) ...

     
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