Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" is a song by Swedish band ABBA. It was recorded in August 1979 in order to help promote their North American and European tour of that year, and was released on ABBA's Greatest Hits Vol. 2 album as the brand new track.
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)"
12 October 1979
- 4:48 (album version)
- 3:21 (video)
- Benny Andersson
- Björn Ulvaeus
Original ABBA version[edit]
History[edit]
"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. Fältskog, as the narrator, weaves the image of a lonely 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 existence. The melody line of the song was played on an ARP Odyssey synthesizer.[3]
Originally, ABBA had recorded another song, "Rubber Ball Man", which was planned as a single. It featured the typical "ABBA-arrangement" with both Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad on lead vocals and the use of classical strings. This song was also performed by the group during rehearsals for its 1979 tour as "Under My Sun". However, the group felt that "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!", with its disco sound, would be a better choice, and thus, "Rubber Ball Man" remained nothing more than a demo.
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)"
1999
3:56
- Thomas Johansson
- Ronald Malmberg
"Brigitte Bardot" (remix)
2002
3:30
- Island
- Universal Music
9 August 2018
4:11
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)"
2008
4:54 (full version)
3:53 (single/soundtrack version)
3:43 (video edit)
- Benny Andersson
- Björn Ulvaeus (executive)
Other covers and uses[edit]
Erasure version[edit]
In 1986, Erasure released a live version of the song as a B-side to their single Oh L'amour and then in 1987 on their US version of the album The Two Ring Circus.[67]
Abbacadabra version[edit]
Tribute group Abbacadabra released a cover of the song on their album "Abbasalute" through Almighty Records in 1992. Mixes of the group's cover version were most recently included on its 2008 compilation We Love ABBA: The Mamma Mia Dance Compilation. Audio samples can be heard on the official Almighty Records website.[68]
BBC sitcom[edit]
The British sitcom comedy Gimme Gimme Gimme recorded a short version of the song as its title theme in 1999.[69]
Mamma Mia! version[edit]
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" is one of the major numbers in the Mamma Mia! musical and movie. The movie version was released as a single in 2008.
Molly Sandén version[edit]
Swedish pop singer Molly Sandén released a version of the song in April 2024, following a live performance on SVT's En Fest för ABBA (A Party for ABBA) concert, celebrating the 50th anniversary of ABBA's Eurovision win.[72]
Unix/Linux Easter egg[edit]
The Unix/Linux computer operating system command line utility "man" for displaying manual pages would print "gimme gimme gimme" when run without arguments on 00:30 (as the opening lyrics of the song are "half past twelve").[73] The Easter egg has been removed since version man-db 2.8.0 after it had been discovered as an annoyance in a software automatic test system on 20 November 2017 and brought to broad attention on the Stack Exchange Q&A network site dedicated to Unix & Linux.[73]
Sampling[edit]
In 2005, the song was sampled by Madonna, who used it on her worldwide hit single "Hung Up" from Confessions on a Dance Floor. Madonna is said to have sent a letter to Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus asking to use the song as a sample,[74] since the Swedish songwriting duo are reluctant to let other artists sample their material. It was only the second time that an ABBA track had been officially sampled, the first being the Fugees in 1996 with their hit "Rumble in the Jungle", sampling part of 1977's "The Name of the Game".
Ava Max "subtly sample[d]" the ABBA song in her 2019 single "Torn".[75] Max stated that she listened to ABBA and Ace of Base during her childhood, and wanted to "add a little disco flair in there".[76]
Rina Sawayama sampled the guitar riff of the ABBA song in her 2022 single "This Hell".[77]