CAMELOT FANTASIES

Moving on to my No. 2 song, folks. Exciting times are ahead, yes. They say it is one of greatest love ballads ever written and sang in history of music. And quite possibly ABBA's most gorgeous ballad of their career  featuring utterly beautiful vocal performances and stylish arrangements. This is in fact by far the fans' favourite. It is also one of critic favourites. They rate this song very high. This used to be my No. 1 song as well until I'd discovered something greater albeit not by a big margin but nonetheless.

From the Internet:

"The Winner Takes It All," a somber but compelling song that became one of ABBA's biggest worldwide successes. Partially inspired by the real-life divorce of members Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog, "The Winner Takes It All" tells the story of a jilted woman, taking a sad, clear-eyed look back at a love affair now over, and casting doubt on her ex’s new relationship. The lyrics that weave the tale have a no-nonsense tone of dark emotion, a feel that is further enhanced by an almost gothic melody that constantly descends from high notes to low notes to enhance the finality of the words. ABBA's recording pushes it into the realm of the truly unforgettable thanks to a heartrending lead vocal from Faltskog and a sophisticated arrangement that builds from soft piano lines and background vocals to a grand operatic coda subtly driven by mid-tempo but insistent drum work. Like so many ABBA songs, the melody at first seems almost elementary and even repetitive, but it builds in cycles across four verses, climaxing in the third before returning to the initial air of melancholy resignation for the finale. This stylish production makes "The Winner Takes It All" one of the most stunning items in ABBA's catalog but the song itself is strong enough that any adult contemporary could have had (or could still have) a big hit with it. Swedish in its sensibilities to the last, the song conceals any sense of reproach in the matter-of-factness of the lyrics. Events speak for themselves, but they speak volumes.

Making of the song and some song facts:

- This searingly poignant 1980 number “The Winner Takes it All,” was written at the height of their success when, ironically, both couples had already come adrift.

- ABBA member Bjorn Ulvaeus wrote this after separating from wife and fellow band member, Agnetha Fältskog. It's about a divorce where one person doesn't want to separate and clings desperately to the marriage. It put Agnetha in the strange spot of being asked to sing a breakup song written by her ex-husband. Ulvaeus didn't intend it this way. He explained: "I sang a demo of it myself which a lot of people liked and said, you have to sing that. But I saw the sensible thing of course, it had to go to Agnetha. I remember coming to the studio with it and everyone said, Oh this is great, wonderful It was strange hearing her singing it. It was more like an actress doing something when she sang it, but deeply moving. Afterwards there were a few tears as well."

- Bjorn has said that while he usually didn't use drugs or alcohol while writing, he had a bottle of brandy next to him while writing the lyrics for this song. It was very personal to him. He told The London Times March 26, 2010: "Usually it's not a good idea to write when you're drunk, but it all came out on that one. By the time I wrote 'The gods may throw their dice' the bottle was empty."

- For many people this song with its heartbroken lyrics, swelling crescendos and sudden lulls is the definitive Abba single. Benny Andersson explained to The Sunday Times June 21, 2009 how the catch in the throat music came to be written: "It's the simplest song," he said. "It has two phrases - that's it. And they just go round and round. Now it also has, around those two phrases, this counterpoint thing going on" - Andersson then played the descending theme that opens the song, runs beneath the chorus and, modulated, responds to the verse's vocal melody - "and without a doubt, without that, it would not have been a song. Music is not only melody; music is everything you hear, everything you put together. But without the core of a strong and preferably original melody, it doesn't matter what you dress it with, it has nothing to lean on." Andersson went on to say that for a long time, there were only the two phrases, the latter (the chorus) with each line following immediately after the one before. "And then one day," he went on to say as he played the song again, "we were out in the country, and I suddenly played the chorus like this, pausing each time for the phrase to gather itself, and all of a sudden it was a song. Björn and I played around with it for hours, just feeling that there was something in it that was talking to us. Then we recorded it, but still without the counterpoint, and it still was no good. It was only when, finally, I played this other part that it really made sense."

- Ulvaeus claimed that 90% of this song is fiction, which is why he didn't feel too bad about having his ex-wife sing it. Said Ulvaeus: "I had this image of a man walking through an empty house with all the furniture removed for the last time as the symbol of divorce and just describing what I see."

- Fältskog has also repeatedly stated that though "The Winner Takes It All" is her favorite ABBA song and that it has an excellent set of lyrics, the story is not that of her and Ulvaeus: there were no winners in their divorce, especially as children were involved.

Reception:

"The Winner Takes It All" was yet another major success for ABBA. It hit #1 in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, and South Africa. It reached the Top 5 in Austria, Finland, France, West Germany, Norway, Switzerland and Zimbabwe, as well as ABBA's native Sweden, while peaking in the Top 10 in Australia, Canada, Italy, Spain and the United States (where it became ABBA's fourth and final American Top 10 hit. The song spent 26 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, more than any other ABBA single). It was also the group's second Billboard AC #1 (after "Fernando").

No. 2 The Winner Takes It All

"Fate controlling our lives. There are cards and dice, winners and losers, judges and rules. Love is a gamble. Agnetha likes the way it rolls on with no beginning or ending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLd-P6lZMms

Also turned in my wings at the Tennis Frontier, so will have to edit my sig.

Also turned in my wings at the Tennis Frontier, so will have to edit my sig.

Wat? Why? You are like the best thing on that forum and you've done so much work. Is it because you are too busy for it?

As to your sig, please have something that shows how much you worship me. Thanks. I have my admirers, yes.

I was at a party and this fella said to me
"Something bad is happening, I'm sure you do agree
People care for nothing, no respect for human rights
Evil times are coming, we are in for darker nights"
I said, "Who are you to talk about impending doom?"
He got kinda wary as he looked around the room
He said, "I'm a minister, a big shot in the state"
I said, "I just can't believe it, boy I think it's great
Brother can you tell me what is right and what is wrong?"
He said, "Keep on rocking baby, 'til the night is gone"

Oh the great moment has come - yes indeedy. So exciting! I am finally ready for my No. 1 song. Please know that I did not write everything that follows. I took help from Wiki (wiki has a very long and different interpretations of this song) as well as some article and some other sources from the internet. I hope you enjoy reading it regardless and like the song. It's one of a kind and needless to say - a masterpiece.  An all time classic.

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"The Day Before You Came" was released in October 1982. It's their second longest (behind "Eagle") song at almost 6:00 in length. Björn Ulvaeus wrote the lyrics. Benny said that in his opinion, "'The Day Before You Came' is the best lyrics that Bjorn has ever written. "The Day Before You Came" was the last song ABBA recorded. It was August 20, 1982. The lights were low as Agnetha put her vocal on, and everyone knew it was the end.

Many years after the song was recorded, Michael Tretow, ABBA's longtime sound engineer, recalled Agnetha performing the lead with dimmed lights and said that the mood had become sad and everybody in the studio knew that 'this was the end'. On this rumour, Stephen Emms of The Guardian continues the story by saying "finishing her vocals, our heroine was to remove her headphones and walk solemnly out into the daylight, never to return".

Musical direction of vocals

Ulvaeus commented that "you can tell in that song that we were straining towards musical theatre as we [he and Benny] got Agnetha to act the part of the person in that song", as opposed to singing it objectively. Kultur says the song is "sung by a dimmed and turned off...Agnetha Fältskog". The most interesting thing about this song is that only two people know the real meaning and interpretation of this song - Bjorn and Agnetha. Agnetha as she had to know since she's the protagonist and the narrator of the song. And of course Bjorn as he wrote the song. 

Reflection on song's success

"The Day Before You Came" was released in October 1982, as both the first new song from ABBA's double compilation album The Singles: The First Ten Years, and also as a single. The song was only a minor hit (for example only charting #32 in the UK, breaking "a string of 19 consecutive top 30 hits" which started in 1975 with "S.O.S."). ABBA's recording, however, hit the top 5 in Belgium, Finland, West Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland. It also reached no. 5 on the Adult Contemporary chart in Canada.

Take40 comments that "although the single … was one of the group’s most accomplished recordings it failed to become a worldwide hit on the scale that they had been used to"... something that Bjorn Ulvaeus retrospectively puts down to the song being "too different and ahead of its time for the ABBA fans [or] too much of a change for a lot of ABBA fans."

Interpretation of the song:

"The Day Before You Came," is an absolutely beautiful synth-pop epic that everybody should hear at least once in their lives. A much talked about, debates have been made on it. The gloomy and dark melody is lifted by the vocal of Agnetha. The synthesizer plays a melancholic repetitive pattern close to the 'routine' of the life, the backing vocals  operatic giving an echo of hope in this melancholy.

Agnetha is singing a woman's hesitant reconstruction of the day before she met someone we assume is her lover. The details are banal, but Agnetha makes them live anyway, and they're contrasted by keening backing vocals of such dread that it's been speculated the song's "You" is a killer, not a partner.

It is an hour by hour description of the daily routine. The workaday world is dull, and Agnetha's aversion to politics is seen in the frown brought on by the editorial. Perhaps she is displeased with a particular brand of politics. She likes the TV show Dallas ( Dallas was television's number one show during the later ABBA years) and Chinese is her favorite food.  She likes reading Marilyn French 'or something of that style' (Marilyn was an American novelist of the women's movement and believed every man on this planet is a rapist). But something is not right. Instead of being a song of happiness and the end of loneliness, the song is chased by overwhelming sadness.

The best bit is that she never says she is in love, or that love is wonderful and world changing. Nor that it is also sad, and disappointing, and rarely lasts. She never tells us that it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. She never even tells us that this is a love song. It's all unsaid.

The beauty of the song is precisely that we don't know what happened next, and no clue is given. Someone came: maybe a lover, maybe a killer, maybe death itself who knows? So dark, and so sad.

The lyrics leave the ending open, but the music provides some clue. There's a morbid suspense in the music. Like something 'bad' has happened to the narrator. The voice is quite breakable, as if she's a mood of contemplation and accepted her grim destiny. The 'you' in the story is maybe her killer.

The simple lyrics feel trivial and yet, it is not. In fact, it is rather mystical. There is something mysterious, moving, sinister, neurotic about this song.

'I must have... because I always do... ....'
It's like the narrator can't remember factually, but is trying to piece together a sequence of events from the (bearable) trivial to the (never mentioned) important. Who is she speaking to? Herself? Her therapist? Her best friend? The person who killed her or her fate that's apparently responsible for her final gloom and doom?

She ironically frowns; is stressed at work; bored with the bunch; smokes heavily; and escapes into fiction. She is somewhat regimented and represses her emotions... (never realising she is actually very unhappy... With mundanity? With the alienating city? With herself?)

She uses the rain as a screen on which to project her repressed emotions and vulnerabilities... The truth that she is unhappy becomes "I was unhappy because it must have been raining."

Of course, all that was 'the day before you came...' when her life was 'well (functioning) within its usual frame...'

So what happened? We are never told. Film Noire! Continental Cinema!

Well, whatever it was, we are left with the feeling that everything changed and for the worst. Her life before 'you came' was mundane but it was still her life and she was fine with it; it was bearable, she was getting by. Previously, she had no conscious sense of living without aim. She found meaning in TV and fiction, etc. 'It's 'funny...but I had no sense of living without aim' i.e. the before-and-after contrast now makes her laugh.

But something happened after it came and it changed her life from complete order to eternal chaos as we learn from the music.

A few clues from the song:

1. And still on top of this I'm pretty sure it must have rained
(Despite having a reasonably normal day, she ends up crying (rain) during the day. The day before you came)

2. Oh yes, I'm sure my life was well within its usual frame
(So the Day before he/she/it came, her life was normal, implying that afterwards it was not)

3. It's funny, but I had no sense of living without aim
(Critical. Before he/she/it came she had no sense of living w/o aim (she did have a purpose or aim in her life); however, this implies that after, there was no aim or purpose to her life.)

4. And rattling on the roof I must have heard the sound of rain
(She cried herself to sleep before the day 'you came')

If we look closer, the song's meaning becomes harder to fathom. Throughout, the lyrics are oddly imprecise – every sentence begins with "I must have … " or "I'm pretty sure … " – and it's this vague recollective tone that gives her account a tinge of unreality, even fiction. She is the perfect unreliable narrator: "I'm sure my life was well within its usual frame", she sings at one point, and we fear the reverse; later she claims, "at the time I never noticed I was blue".

Did she die the next day, or even that night? Is "You" her death itself? Is she singing to it and letting it know how she was supposed to meet the man of her dream in the train and he was going to take her away from her mundane life? It's apparent from the video clip that the guy she flirts with in the train is a dream, in the end he does not materialize. Because when she finally looks back at the same scene towards the end of the clip, the platform is now empty. A black crow flies away (a black crow is a symbol of death in many countries especially in South Asia) as the train leaves the platform seconds later leaving an impending doom.

And all this is heightened by an extended funereal instrumental coda which acts as one big question mark, leaving us with the feeling that this is not just a meditation on the quotidian but something greater, existential even.

No. 1 The Day Before You Came

And turning out the light
I must have yawned and cuddled up for yet another night
And rattling on the roof I must have heard the sound of rain
The day before you came

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HnOFwqpLRQ

Live Version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GAPAvev-os

No sign of married people, eh?

Anyway, what do you think about this Spanish version? It ain't dubbed - they actually sang in Spanish. Just as good in my opinion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzkT57HpeUo

I also forgot Agnetha's Take A Chance On Me. NO!!!!!!!!!!!

It's one of their No. 1 hits. I have two performances of the same song - one was in Japan and the other one was in Switzerland around the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcFk6ccdtBo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8yICcgg33o

Emma people are looking for you to discuss very important tennis matters.