Chiquitita is one of ABBA’s most popular, enduring, and beloved songs. It is also one of their biggest hits, and was released in January 1979 as the first single from the Voulez-Vous album. This was however not always the plan.
The lead single of the album was originally planned to be If It Wasn’t For the Nights. This was the best candidate the band had at the time, as it took time for Chiquitita to emerge. In fact, the whole album was slow moving. For the first time since they started, the sessions for the next ABBA album had not been going smoothly.
1978 had been a tough year. Material was emerging at a slower pace than normal, and was laboured over rather than playfully falling into place. The overall feeling was that most of what they came up with was ‘good, not great’ – which felt neither good nor great.
Work on the album had started in March 1978, and was moved to the group’s brand new Polar Music Studios in June where most of the album would be recorded.
Work continued through the summer, and as the album was taking time to come together it was decided to release a single to keep their name in the public eye. Summer Night City was chosen as the best candidate and released in September.
Unfortunately, the feeling was that the single didn’t perform as well as hoped. In hindsight nobody can say that the single did too badly (11 worldwide top 5 placements, a further 5 top 20s, and A-listed on radio all over), but ABBA was used to higher levels of success at the time and they expected more. Even if the single did well enough, it was a step down success-wise.
Some of the disappointment may have spilled over from the general state of things. There was a nagging feeling that the new album was dragging. Coming up with material was a struggle rather than a joy. After eight months they didn’t even have half an album’s worth of tracks that they felt truly great about.
It is impossible to ignore that things were also very challenging on the home front for at least one of the couples in the band. Bjørn and Agnetha would eventually separate in January 1979 after a challenging year. The fact that they kept a professional relationship going in the band during and after this period is amazing and speaks volumes of them both as people, but it won’t have made things easier for anyone.
On top of everything there was also a deadline looming. 1979 was going to be the International Year of Children. To mark this, a benefit concert would be staged on 9 January in the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. The idea was that each participating artist would contribute a new song, donating the royalties for that song to UNICEF.
The Bee Gees had already released their contribution (Too Much Heaven) in November 1978 and it was a worldwide hit – setting the bar for everybody else. Other participating artists were John Denver, Donna Summer, Rod Stewart, Andy Gibb, Earth Wind And Fire, Olivia Newton-John, Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge.
ABBA had decided to release their UNICEF single in January, to coincide with the event. By early December 1978 their candidate was still If It Wasn’t For the Nights – a catchy pop-disco number very much of its time.
Work on the album continued, and on 4 December, Bjørn, Benny and their trusted ABBA musicians (Ola Brunkert on drums, Rutger Gunnarsson on bass and Lasse Wellander on guitar) gathered in the studio to finish another track – the one which would eventually become Chiquitita. They had a decent idea which had existed for a while in early form, with working titles such as Kålsupare (“Cabbage Drinker”) and Three Wise Guys. This time they managed to properly finish work on the backing track.
Bjørn would also write a more proper set of lyrics for the reworked song. At this point, it got the title In the Arms of Rosalita. In this form the lyrics are sung from the perspective of a scorned woman whose lover left her for another man.
The lyrics were never in danger of being as intense or explicitly scathing as Alanis Morrisette’s You Oughta Know – in many ways the ultimate ‘woman scorned’-song. They were quite innocent really, never going much further than a “one day you’ll be sorry” perspective, along with nostalgic memories of times past. Agnetha and Frida would take turns on the verses, sharing the part of the mournful and scorned woman.
Still, something did not feel right. Had they made another ‘good, not great’ song? Upon reflection, the backing track felt a bit slow and plodding. The music should have danced along, but the components of the song felt lumbered with heavy beats dominating it. Bjørn and Benny had to conclude that this was yet another song where the full potential hadn’t been realised. They knew they could do more with it, though, and were far from willing to give up on it.
Further work would however have to wait, as ABBA travelled to London (England) on 6 December for TV work. Most notably they appeared on the Mike Yarwood Christmas Show (broadcast on Christmas Day, 25 December), performing If It Wasn’t For the Nights which was still slotted in to be their next single at the time.
Back in Sweden, on 13 December Bjørn and Benny once again asked the session musicians to come to the studio for a reworking of In the Arms of Rosalita. While in England they had heard El Condor Pasa by Simon and Garfunkel on the radio, which gave them the idea that emphasising the Latin American feel of the tune might bring the needed results. On the session tapes in Stockholm they can even be heard discussing that song as a source of inspiration.
The song was restructured to fit this new emphasis. The song had always featured an acoustic guitar intro by Lasse Wellander, but this was now expanded upon and given a slight Latino flair. A bridge in the middle of the composition with vocals was moved to the end. Everything was also removed from that section – vocals, instrumentation, etc – except the chord structure. On top of those, Benny would play a newly written piano melody which is the part we all know and love.
All of this worked like a charm. Suddenly the music was flowing nicely – it wasn’t plodding and slow moving any longer. It was much lighter in feel, and the Spanish-Latino feel that unlocked this aspect of the song is evident.
This change in the music made the existing mournful lyrics a bad fit, and Bjørn started work on more definite and more uplifting set of lyrics for the new incarnation of the song. At first it was renamed Chiquitita Angelina, but was reworked again into Chiquitita. The lyrics were transformed into a message of comfort and encouragement for a heartbroken friend, speaking of the hope for better days to come.
Chiquitita, you and I know
How the heartaches come and they go and the scars they’re leaving
You’ll be dancing once again and the pain will end
You will have no time for grieving
Chiquitita, you and I cry
But the sun is still in the sky and shining above you
Let me hear you sing once more like you did before
Sing a new song, Chiquitita
Try once more like you did before
Sing a new song, Chiquitita
Some lines from In the Arms of Rosalita survived the rewrite in some form, such as “enchained by your own sorrow” and “there is no hope for tomorrow.” Agnetha would sing the first verse alone and be joined by Frida for the remainder of the song.
With that, the song had finally been completed! Everyone knew that this was one of the best tracks they had done for quite some time, and would clearly be the strongest single. If It Wasn’t For the Nights was immediately relegated to album track status and was never considered even for later single releases.
Chiquitita would be the song that ABBA donated to UNICEF, and it was premiered at the UNICEF concert on 9 January 1979. The show was broadcast on US TV the following day, with the rest of the world following suit at various points during the rest of the month. The song was an instant success everywhere, with everybody talking about “ABBAs new song.”
When Chiquitita was released as a single on 16 January it immediately became a worldwide hit, reaching number one in about a dozen countries and top ten in most of the rest. To say this was a relief for all involved is a significant understatement.
ABBA had been largely gone from the public eye in 1978. The only new material released that year was the Summer Night City single. This was also the first year with no new album since their inception (and indeed, the only album-less year during all their active years).
One would almost be forgiven for thinking that ABBA was on the decline and even winding down. They also had their own frustrations related to working on new material. In short, they needed to come back with a huge single to prove to everybody that they were still valid, and that’s exactly what they did.
Chiquitita did not only bring ABBA back to the top of the charts. The song made them relevant again, and showed to all of the world that they had more songwriting magic in their arsenal. This was also something the band had to prove to themselves, and with their confidence duly boosted the songs thankfully started flowing again.
In the end, the band ended up with many great songs to make Voulez-Vous into the album they needed it to be. It was released in April 1979, and the year would prove a much better one for all of them than the previous one.
The song would also help ABBA achieve a breakthrough in South America where they hadn’t seen much success yet. The song was certainly perfect for such an endeavour with its Spanish-flavoured arrangement and title. To top it off the song was recorded with Spanish lyrics, sung phonetically, and this version was released as a single in Argentina in April 1979. It went straight to number one in the charts.
Within a few months the Spanish Chiquitita had sold half a million copies in Argentina. The English version had done significantly less business in that country, stalling at 25,000 sold copies. Clearly language mattered, and the Spanish version of the song would go on to make the rounds in neighbouring countries to become the biggest hit from any artist in South America in 25 years.
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