CAMELOT FANTASIES

I am ready for my No. 3! Ha ha but this number should not come as a surprise, really. It's a very hot hit all over the world. Even Madonna took a sample of this song (Hung Up) and made millions out of it. There are a myriad number of versions of this song all around the world but nothing will beat the original. Because one can never make an argument and say, a copy of Mozart is better than the original.

Here's a bit from Wiki...

"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man after Midnight)" was written and composed by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, with the lead vocal sung by Agnetha Fältskog. Agnetha, as the narrator, weaves the image of a lonely young woman who longs for a romantic relationship and views her loneliness as a forbidding darkness of night, even drawing parallels to how the happy endings of movie stars are so different from her own existence.

"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was another highly successful song for ABBA. It hit no. 1 in Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, and Switzerland, while reaching the Top 3 in Austria, West Germany, Great Britain, The Netherlands, and Norway. It also proved to be ABBA's most successful song in Japan.

Jim Colyer describes, "this is about the fear of being alone as Agnetha laments the gap between her life and the lives of movie stars. Our preoccupation is with their glamorous lives, so different from our own.

The climate in Scandinavia is always a factor. It is after midnight, and autumn winds are blowing outside Agnetha's window. She is watching the late show. It is gloomy. Shadows are everywhere, and she is depressed. She prays. Since Swedes are largely atheist, she has no reason to believe her prayer was heard. She wants a man!

Agnetha opens her window and looks into the night. No one is there. She needs a man to take her through the darkness to the break of the day. Sex is implied! The effect of long winter nights on the Swedish psyche cannot be overestimated. 19 hours of darkness make for a high suicide rate. Agnetha's mother committed suicide, something the fans do not like to talk about."
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Did you know Agnetha's mum actually committed suicide by throwing herself out the window from the six-story flat she shared with her husband? She hid her mum's suicide for 10 years. She did not even mention it in her autobiography 'As I Am'. A former friend said later that they had marriage problems. Her father was a heavy drinker and it made her mother very depressed. Agnetha til this day is very haunted by this horrific suicide. She couldn't comprehend that her mother would take such a terrible step. She used to visit her dad after that incident but he too died a year later. Her father lived in a special home after her mum committed suicide.

One of her former friends revealed later, "From the moment her mother killed herself, everything about her changed. She shut herself away from the world. It was then that people noticed how strange and reclusive she had become."

She's known as Garbo the Second in Sweden.

No. 3 Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie!



And here's the live version of the song. They made the song faster here and also, the instrument after the first two choruses is a bit different than the studio version. Fans say, Agnetha is at her best here in this hot live version from 1979 from 'ABBA In Concert'.