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.
Original ABBA version.
History.
"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 own existence. The melody line of the song was played on an ARP Odyssey synthesizer.
The song was recorded at Polar Music Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 1979, and was ready for release in October of that year, in conjunction with the group's tour of North America and Europe.
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.
Single version.
The single version of this song, which was released in its full length of 4:48 everywhere else in the world, was released in the United States and Canada in an edited format, being just 3:36 in length. This was done by removing the first half of the opening instrumental, the first four of the eight bars of the instrumental bridge between the second and final chorus, and fading the song out early. It is believed the edit was done by Atlantic, ABBA's North American record label and not Polar, hence the reason why it was available only in the US and Canada. This single version has never appeared on any commercial CD issued by Polar/Universal to date and along with the US promo edit of "Chiquitita", it marked the only time Atlantic ever commercially released an edited version of an ABBA single while they had the North American rights to release ABBA recordings.
The single was never released by Polar Music in the group's native Sweden, instead being featured on the "Greatest Hits Vol. 2" album, which did get a Swedish release. While Polar released the single in neighbouring Norway, Denmark, and Finland, copies of these versions were not made available in the Swedish record stores, who thus arranged to import copies of the United Kingdom version on Epic Records. Sales of these imports were sufficient for the single to reach no. 16 on the sales chart in Sweden.
Spanish version.
"¡Dame! ¡Dame! ¡Dame!" is the Spanish-language version of the song. The song was released as a single to promote "Gracias Por La Música" in Latin America and other Spanish-speaking countries.
Reception.
"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, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Norway. It also proved to be ABBA's most successful song in Japan, hitting no. 17.
Erasure version.
Erasure covered the song as a B-Side of their single Oh L'amour in 1986. The track is more upbeat in the style of hi-NRG dance. The track gradually speeds up in the last 30 seconds to over 200 BPM. the track was also available in the 1987 album The Two Ring Circus and 1988 album The Innocents. Erasure were highly influenced by Abba and would later release Abba-esque E.P. in 1992, consisting of four additional Abba covers.
A-Teens version.
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was A-Teens' third single (fourth in other territories) from their first album "The ABBA Generation", a collection of ABBA cover versions.
When the single was released in 1999 in Sweden, it earned a Gold certification. It also became their third top ten hit there and the band's third top 40 hit in Germany. The song peaked at no. 51 in Switzerland, no. 27 in the Netherlands, no. 20 in Mexico, and no. 22 in Argentina and Chile.
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was recorded in Spanish for the Latin American promotion that started in early 2000.
Music video.
The music video was directed by Sebastian Reed, and it was filmed in Sweden.
The video starts with the boys entering a warehouse, where they find a crystal ball. Inside, there is an "alternate world" where they perform the song. Part of the video also features the band at a bowling alley where they play a few games against each other.
The video had high rotation on several music channels, but it was not as successful as the first singles.
The version of the song used on the video is the Radio Version, which is shorter and includes different beats and sounds to the album version.
Releases.
European 2-track CD single
European maxi CD
Mexican CD single
Japanese maxi CD
"1 Track CD"'
Star Academy France version.
In 2001, the song was covered by the first edition of the French TV reality show Star Academy 1. The song was credited to Olivia Ruiz, Jenifer Bartoli and Carine Haddadou, three of the contestants. This version went straight to no. 1 in France, dislodging Star Academy's previous hit, "La Musique (Angelica)", and stayed atop for two weeks.
Cher version.
American singer and actress Cher covered the song on her album "Dancing Queen", released on 28 September 2018. Cher's version is the lead single on the album. The accompanying audio video for "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was premiered through Cher's official YouTube channel on 9 August 2018. An extended version of the track was later released on 14 September 2018. The song peaked at number 4 on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart.
Critical reception.
Writing for "Rolling Stone", Brittany Spanos felt that "working with producer Mark Taylor who helped seal Cher's legacy with the game-changing "Believe" in the late Nineties, she finds subtle changes that update ABBA classics without totally stripping them of the catchiness that made those songs beloved hits well beyond their heyday. "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)," "SOS" and "Mamma Mia" are given just enough of a knob turn that they're transformed from upbeat FM radio pop into club bangers, pulsating with every beat."
Credits and personnel.
Credits for "Dancing Queen" adapted from AllMusic.
Film version.
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was the first single released from the soundtrack for the 2008 film version of "Mamma Mia!" by American actress Amanda Seyfried. Unlike the original stage version, Seyfried sings the complete song as a solo performance, and also does the same in a music video to promote both the single and the movie.
Covers and uses in the media.
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" is one of the major numbers in the "Mamma Mia!" musical and movie. In 2008, the song was covered in a jazz/lounge style by American group BNB on its album "Bossa Mia: Songs of ABBA". Tribute group Abbacadabra released numerous dance cover remixes of the song through Almighty Records in the late 1990s. 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. The British sitcom comedy "Gimme Gimme Gimme" used this song as its title theme.
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"). 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.
Sampling.
In 2005, the song was sampled by American singer and songwriter 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, 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".