Does your mother know

Does your mother know
ABBA
publication	April 27, 1979
length	3:14
Genre (s)	pop
text	Bjorn Ulvaeus
music	Benny Andersson , B. Ulvaeus
Label	Polar Music
album	Voulez-Vous

Does Your Mother Know is a song by the Swedish pop group ABBA from 1979. It was written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus , with Ulvaeus doing the lead vocals, which is unusual. The piece appeared in April 1979 on their sixth album Voulez-Vous and was released as a single at the same time. The song Kisses of Fire , which was also included on the album, was on the B-side. The play is about a man flirting with a much younger girl in a nightclub.

Emergence

The song was written during Andersson and Ulvaeus' stay in the Bahamas in January 1979. There they also developed several other pieces for the album. Like the ABBA songs Voulez-Vous and Summer Night City , which were new at the time , it is a disco number. They were all influenced by the disco style, which was very often played on US radio stations at the time. The two composers from ABBA had previously had writer's block, which they were able to overcome. The recording of Does Your Mother Know began on February 6, 1979 under the working title "I Can Do It". The introduction consists of drums, bass, piano and then guitar tracks.

In February 1979 the group went to Switzerland to film a television special. Here the song was premiered ten days after the start of recording, but in a version that was later revised. Work on it continued until the end of March 1979 before Does Your Mother Know could be released as a single in April. According to Ulvaeus, the success of the single might have been even greater if Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad had taken on the lead vocals.

An initially planned Spanish version of the piece was never realized. For various releases in other countries, Does Your Mother Know was mixed differently, for example for an Australian edition in which the end of the song was shortened by about ten seconds. For a Japanese publication, however, the beginning was extended by over two minutes. On April 5, 1979, the group filmed the music videos for Does Your Mother Know and Voulez-Vous at the Europa Film Studios in Stockholm . They wore different costumes for both appearances.

success

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Singles

Does your mother know   DE 10 May 21, 1979 (15 weeks)   AT 13 06/15/1979 (12 weeks)   CH 6th May 27, 1979 (10 weeks)   UK 4th 05/05/1979 (9 weeks)   US 19th 05/19/1979 (14 weeks)

The single went from the album to the most successful in the US, where it made the top 20. She also managed to do this in Mexico and South Africa, while she was in the top ten in Ireland, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and Zimbabwe and in the top 30 in France and New Zealand. In Belgium, she topped the charts with number 1 . In addition, it received silver once in Great Britain for 250,000 pieces .

In France, Does Your Mother Know was released on a blue 12-inch single with Voulez-Vous . In Argentina and Brazil, the song was released as an extended play along with three other album tracks .

Trivia

• For the film Mamma Mia! from the year 2008, in which the song is sung, the roles have been reversed in the text. While the original song is about a man who flirts with a much younger girl, the film shows a quarrel between one of the older protagonists and a young person.

literature

• Carl Magnus Palm: Light and Shadow. ABBA - The real story. Bosworth Musikverlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86543-100-4 (German translation: Helmut Müller).
• Carl Magnus Palm: Abba. Story and songs compact. Bosworth Music, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86543-227-8 ( compact story and songs ), (German translation: Cecilia Senge).

Web links

• Official ABBA website single cover
• Lyrics on golyr.de
• Music video on YouTube

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ABBA Gold - The Success Story, p. 82
2. ↑ Carl Magnus Palm: Light and Shadow. ABBA - The real story. Bosworth 2006, page 456 ff
3. ↑ Carl Magnus Palm: Light and Shadow. ABBA - The real story. Bosworth 2006, 457
4. ↑ ^{a b} abbaomnibus.net Does Your Mother Know (Early Version)
5. ↑ ^{a b} abbaomnibus.net Does Your Mother Know
6. ↑ Carl Magnus Palm: Abba - Story and songs compact. Bosworth 2007, 65
7. ^ Sara Russell: The ABBA travel guide to Stockholm. (German edition) Premium Publishing, Stockholm 2010. Page 128
8. ↑ Charts DE Charts AT Charts CH Charts UK Charts US
9. ↑ for chart placements see ABBA - The Worldwide Chart Lists ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2012 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ see bpi.co.uk
11. ↑ getabba.com Pictures from the French edition of Vogue, accessed on January 12, 2014
12. ↑ getabba.com Information on the Spanish EP, accessed on January 12, 2014