From the vantage point of over 50 years later, it may appear as if ABBA ruled the 1970s. Their music still resonates as strongly today as ever. Movies have been built around their songs. Musicals continue to draw full houses. The ABBA avatar show is another success. Their albums continue to be big sellers, with their greatest hits album ABBA Gold being one of the biggest album sellers ever (20th overall, with sales exceeding 32 million copies worldwide).
In the UK, a market where ABBA had nine #1 albums and nine #1 singles, ABBA Gold is currently the second best-selling album of all time, having been an almost permanent fixture of their official Albums Chart since its release in 1992. It is only beaten by the greatest hits compilation of another iconic band – Queen.
ABBA was however not an overnight success. Winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo in 1974 gave them exposure and attention, but it took a few more years for the album buying public to be convinced of the band’s qualities.
1976 would be the year when ABBA firmly established themselves as one of the most popular groups in the world. They always had catchy, melodic songs, but their fourth album Arrival saw Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson take big strides forward as songcrafters. Arrival was by far their best album, performing well in every market. Hit singles like Fernando and Dancing Queen would also top the charts all over the world, even finally giving them #1 hits in the elusive UK and US markets.
If the band had one goal that was very important to them in 1976, it was to crack the British market. It was seen a very important pop market, and the group was downright anxious to succeed there. The rest of mainland Europe had been a lot quicker in embracing ABBA, but in the United Kingdom, only their Eurovision winning song Waterloo had been a hit. Other singles, as well as their first three albums, had pretty much been ignored.
And America? Forget about it. Although, it was felt that if they could get a foothold in Britain, that might be a springboard towards American success. ABBA were keen to reach the top levels of the most important music markets in the world. They knew that all they could do was to keep on working, cross their fingers and hope to be given another break.
Arrival was meant to be their key to the promised lands.
The initial recording sessions for the album were held on 4 and 5 August 1975. This was a great start. The sessions produced great takes on two of the band’s best known songs: Dancing Queen and Fernando.
The biggest challenge to overcome if they wanted the rest of the album to be equally great was actually finding the time to focus on songwriting and recording. The initial goal was to have the album ready by spring 1976, but they were in constant demand with a packed schedule. There were contracted solo projects to finish, production work for other Polar recording artists, and a sudden upsurge in promotional activities for TV stations and general appearances which saw them journey across Europe several times. The group even spent two weeks in the United States laying some groundwork for their future success. Finally, they were whisked away to Great Britain for appearances, as SOS had finally brought the group back into the Top 10.
Back in Sweden, album sessions were waiting, but given everything else that was going on, there were delays in continuing work on other songs. They managed some intermittent sessions over the fall of 1975, but primarily spent them improving on and finalising Dancing Queen. The sum of demands on their attention made ABBA and their management realize that the autumn of 1976 was a more realistic release period for the new album rather than spring.
The next recording sessions of note didn’t happen until December 1975, but further distractions were waiting around the corner, including their first visit to Australia. The airing of the music videos for I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do and Mamma Mia on the nationally broadcast TV pop show Countdown gave the band enormous popularity rapidly, and Countdown would continue to be a key promoter of the group via their distinctive music videos. This was the start of an immense interest for ABBA in Australia, with a lot of #1 singles and albums. When they arrived on 4 March 1976 for a nine-day promotional stay, they were subject to a reception on a level they had never experienced anywhere before – yet it was just a small taste of the hysterical reception they would receive just about a year later.
The international success was made even bigger through the release of Fernando, their biggest single up to that point. This only made the world keen for the band to make yet another round of promotional appearances in support of Fernando. The carousel never stopped. Something had to give.
On 23 March 1976, ABBA finally shut the doors on the outside world and concentrated on creating music. They knew if they wanted proper time to create an album, they had to put aside that time and simply let other activities wait. The band had plans to grow, and the continual distractions had become a danger to their master plan. Now the time had come to create the album and singles that would take them to the next level.
The new sessions could not have had a more encouraging start. Just like the previous August sessions had produced some of ABBA’s finest songs, the first one from the March sessions would also come to be recognised as one of ABBA’s ultimate masterworks: Knowing Me, Knowing You.
As the group began work on the song, it had a working title of Ring It In. A lot of their songs had tentative titles, which were often so ridiculous that they knew they would have to change them at some point. Did you know that Dancing Queen was first titled Bogaloo, SOS was first known as Turn Me On, or or that Chiquitita was initially known as Kålsupare (Swedish for ‘cabbage drinker’)? A closer look at ABBA’s tentative song titles could almost be an article of its own.
As it happens, ABBA had someone in their organisation who was good with coming up with good song titles that would stick: their manager Stig “Stikkan” Anderson.
During the early years, when English-language lyrics became a requirement, they were usually written in collaboration between Björn and Stig, mainly by Stig providing a set of lyrical ideas that Björn would then do further work on. By 1976 Stig was mainly contributing titles only, which meant it was up to Björn to build a story around it. (After the following year’s ABBA The Album, Stig would no longer provide any inputs.)
For most of the songs on Arrival, Björn spent a lot of time listening to the rough mix of the basic backing tracks over and over again. The song’s given title often suggested a direction, and Björn would have to feel his way through each song, figuring out what the title and music was saying to him.
Stig would provide Knowing Me, Knowing You as a better title option than Ring It In. The pragmatic title, combined with the recording’s mid-tempo pace and slightly unsettling (but musically brilliant) shifts between major and minor chords, suggested a theme of a couple accepting the inevitability of their break-up – “we just have to face it, this time we’re through,” as the completed lyrics would have it.
No more carefree laughter
Silence ever after
Walking through an empty house, tears in my eyes
Here is where the story ends, this is goodbyeKnowing me, knowing you
There is nothing we can do
Knowing me, knowing you
We just have to face it, this time we’re through
Breaking up is never easy, I know, but I have to go
Knowing me, knowing you
It’s the best I can do
Much has been made of the fact that this song was one of the first in a long line of songs depicting break-ups similar to the two ABBA couples’ real-life divorces. It should be pointed out that it was written and recorded years before either of them decided to go their separate ways. The director of the music video would still make use the fact that the band consisted of two couples. He made them into the main characters of the song’s story, making them deliver lines to each other in dramatic fashion. Given what happened just a few years later, it is easy (especially in hindsight) to wonder whether there’s more of their private life in the song than people first thought.
In the book Mamma Mia! How Can I Resist You, Björn appears unsure. “It’s possible that I felt a premonition about something” he says, but stresses that the lyrics were more about him trying to advance himself as a lyricist: “It’s as simple as me being able to imagine a house being emptied, with boxes standing against walls and all the furniture being taken away, just a few bits and pieces left behind, and the echoing steps of a man walking around those rooms and remembering the past.”
This description actually sounds spot on for some of the songs that would follow a few years later, but that is a different story…
The “fait accompli” theme of the lyrics and the dark drama of the song made it a natural song for Frida to handle as lead vocalist. She turned in a bravura performance, colouring her tones with her very own brand of restrained regret and resolved determination to see the crisis through. Full marks also to Agnetha’s supporting role, where her ghost-like echoes of “memories, good days, bad days” certainly add an eerie overtone to the song.
The song is rich with harmonies, and it is interesting to note that a few different things were attempted. In the final version, the title line is followed by an ‘ah-ha’ (“Knowing me, knowing you (ah-ha) / There is nothing we can do). In an early version, they attempted to repeat the title instead. (“Knowing me, knowing you (knowing me, knowing you) / There is nothing we can do”). Admittedly this does make the section a bit more crowded, which is why they may have opted to scale it down to something simpler.
The last known recording date for Knowing Me, Knowing You is 24 May 1976, when guitarist Lasse Wellander added new guitar parts to the song. This included the characteristic and memorable harmony guitar solo lines. With those in place, the song had reached perfection.
Only half of the songs on the album were recorded at that point, but ABBA must already have sensed that this would be one of the highlights on the album. It remains a favourite to the group members to this day. “Knowing Me, Knowing You is a great recording,” Benny said in the Mamma Mia! book. “I really like it, and the verse is one of my favourites.”
The rest of the album was completed over the summer of 1976. The album was not completed when they had to take an afternoon off to shoot the first visualisation clip for Knowing Me, Knowing You. The song was slated for inclusion on the upcoming TV special ABBA-dabba-dooo!!, filmed by Swedish television between June and September. In this clip of the song, director Leonard Eek filmed the members in the Stockholm archipelago, on and around the island of Viggsö, where they all had summer houses and, famously, wrote many of their songs. This clip is much less common than the full music video that would follow, but is included (alongside the entire ABBA-dabba-dooo!! TV special) on the DVD included with the Arrival Deluxe Edition.
Arrival was released as ABBA’s fourth studio album on 11 October 1976. The album became a major seller all over the world, becoming the top-selling album of 1977 in both the UK and West Germany. The fact that it featured three blockbuster hits in Dancing Queen, Money Money Money, and Knowing Me, Knowing You (and in some territories a fourth with the inclusion of Fernando) gave it a very high profile. In the UK, the album was in the charts as late as 2018, cementing the special relationship the region have with that ABBA album in particular.
Knowing Me, Knowing You was released as the third single from the album on 14 February 1977. It became one of their more successful singles, hitting #1 in the UK (where it was one of the biggest singles of 1977), West Germany (where it was ABBA’s sixth consecutive chart-topper), Ireland, Mexico, and South Africa. It reached #3 in Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and was a top 10 hit in Australia, France, New Zealand and Norway. In the United States, it became ABBA’s sixth top 20 single, peaking at #14 on the Hot 100 and reaching #7 on Billboard’s AC chart.
ABBA was never a band for touring and playing live as much as they could have. They did some significant tours, chronicled in ABBA The Movie and the home video release ABBA Live At Wembley. For the most part, though, they opted to visit TV shows to keep themselves seen. They made it a habit early on to visit as many as they could, but it got to the point where it wasn’t possible for them to fulfil all requests. This made them start to record music videos pretty early on – which they did for several tracks from each album, even beyond the singles. This gave TV stations a lot of options, and most of them would be used over a period of time.
This strategy made ABBA into one of the bands from that era with the highest amount of music videos and TV performances, which is amazing for fans coming to them now. There are hundreds of video clips showcasing different TV appearances on YouTube – lip syncing performances, video shoots, and even the odd live-in-studio appearance. They got those performances down to a fine art.
It was obvious for everybody that there would be a proper music video for Knowing Me, Knowing You. This happened either late 1976 or early 1977, as the band was busy rehearsing and preparing for their imminent tour of Europe and Australia. An afternoon was scheduled for the video shoot. ABBA’s regular promo clip director, Lasse Hallström, was called in to film it. He sent them trudging out into the snow-filled, almost too typically Swedish winter landscape to shoot them singing lines while facing each other, to turn away as a new line is sung. At the end of the video, the band’s female members are seen walking away through thick snow.
At some point the director took mercy upon the band and allowed them into a studio where they continued singing at each other, now set against various coloured backdrops. These are interspersed with the outdoors footage and works well as far as providing variation.
Like most of their videos, this one did not have much of a storyline. Hallström understood that the basic power of the band members singing the song would be hard to match, and in seeing it again after all these years, he was right. The video sees the band go through every iconic singing pose they were known for. It has become one of the most (in)famous examples of the archetypical video image of ABBA, where the group members would be coupled in different combinations of pairs, contrasting one against the other, turning this way or that way as the song is progressing.
Three years later, this was one of the songs selected for inclusion on ABBA’s Spanish-language album, Gracias Por La Música. The Spanish version, Conociéndome, Conociéndote, was recorded in January 1980, with the album release following a few months later.
For an album released in 1976, it would have a very long shelf life and be a big long-term seller for the band, no doubt aided by the never-ending flow of incredible singles. Arrival ended up being the best-selling album of 1977 in the United Kingdom. In America, it was awarded a gold certification, which was a gigantic step up for the band even there. Not bad for markets that had pretty much ignored their albums up to then.
Following the release of the album, ABBA went out on a concert tour of Europe and Australia between January and March 1977. This was their first major tour, anything prior being short jaunts. It opened with a sold out show in Oslo, Norway on 28 January, and continued to be a complete success with capacity houses everywhere.
Their Australian visit in March 1977 was particularly memorable. ABBAmania was sweeping the nation, and they played 11 dates for 160,000 people. The opening concert at the Sydney Showground was marred by torrential rain, with Frida slipping on the wet stage. However, the audience was sensational, and all four members would later recall this concert as the most memorable of their career. Upon their arrival in Melbourne, a civic reception was held at the Melbourne Town Hall where ABBA appeared on the balcony to greet an enthusiastic crowd of 6,000. Their entire stay was accompanied by mass hysteria and unprecedented media attention, a lot of which is captured on film in ABBA: The Movie which was shot during their Australian stay. It features appearances, fly-on-the-wall sequences, as well as concert footage from the shows.
Ever since first becoming a worldwide hit single, Knowing Me, Knowing You has held a position as one of ABBA’s most loved and admired songs, often hailed as one of their first signs of true maturity. Like much of the group’s best work, this is partly because it strikes a chord with everyone who’s ever tried and failed at making a relationship work. But above all, with Knowing Me, Knowing You ABBA created one of the finest pop recordings of the 1970s.
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