Summer Night City
| Summer Night City | |
|---|---|
| ABBA | |
| publication | September 6, 1978 |
| length | 3:34 |
| Genre (s) | Pop / Europop / Disco |
| Author (s) | Benny Andersson , Björn Ulvaeus |
| album | Greatest Hits Vol. 2 , |
Summer Night City is a song by the Swedish pop group ABBA . It was written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus . The lead vocals are alternated in pairs by all four members or sung together. In September 1978 it was released as the first single from the sessions for the group's sixth album; Voulez-Vous . The song is about the so-called disco life in a big city.
Emergence
Recording for Summer Night City began on May 29, 1978. It was the first song produced in Polar Music 's new recording studio , the working title was Kalle Skändare . Until August, a month before the first release, the song was still being revised. As one of the few ABBA songs, it has a real disco beat and pulsating, driving rhythms. Although Summer Night City was later successful, Andersson and Ulvaeus were never entirely satisfied with it. They saw it as a track that wasn't fancy enough. Although they had tried everything from compressing it to extracting a few passages, they thought it was still missing something fundamental. This is probably due to the fact that the track originally planned for the new album was ultimately not put on its track list.
On August 22nd and 23rd, 1978, a music video was shot for the song.
The B-side, a medley of the songs Pick a Bale of Cotton , On Top of Old Smokey and Midnight Special , was recorded in May 1975. The benefit served a West German charity event (“Stars in the sign of a good star”), the proceeds of which were intended to benefit the fight against cancer.
success
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Chart positions Explanation of the data |
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The result of Summer Night City was just as unsatisfactory for ABBA as the previous single Eagle . On the one hand it was the first single that has not made it into the top 3 in the British charts since SOS , on the other hand it did not do particularly well in Germany, Austria and Switzerland either. In the United States, the single was not released at all. Sweden , Finland and Ireland were the only European countries where Summer Night City topped the charts. In Belgium (# 2), Mexico (# 10) and Zimbabwe (# 4) it was at least in the top ten .
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
- Summer Night City . Retrieved July 23, 2018
- Lyrics on golyr.de
- Music video on YouTube