Summer Night City

"Summer Night City"
Single by ABBA
from the album Greatest Hits Vol. 2
B-side	"Medley"
Released	6 September 1978 (Sweden) 16 September 1978 (UK)
Format	7" single
Genre	Pop/Europop/Disco
Length	3:34
Writer(s)	Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson
Producer	Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson
Certification	Silver (UK)
ABBA singles chronology
"Eagle" (1978) "Summer Night City" (1978) "Chiquitita" (1979)

"Summer Night City", written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, is ABBA's 2nd non-album single, released on 6 September 1978. It was originally intended as the lead single from the group's upcoming Voulez-Vous album, but was eventually not included. However, it was included as a bonus track on the 1997 CD re-issue.

History

The recording sessions for "Summer Night City" began in early 1978. It had the Working Title (Kalle Skändare). ABBA's new recording studio, Polar Music Studio, had opened in May, but had not been ready to use initially, so the primary backing track had been recorded at Metronome Studio. A 43-second ballad-style introduction to the song had been edited out to improve the overall quality, but nothing seemed to work. Allegedly, mixing the single took at least a week, far more than it took to mix any other track in ABBA's recording history. A reluctant ABBA decided to release the song as a single in September despite their disappointment with the track as it was. The group still performed the song live on their 1979 world tour, though with the original introduction that had been removed in the studio recording. The unreleased version with the extended intro was finally released as part of the box set Thank You for the Music.

The single's B-side was a medley of the American traditional songs "Pick a Bale of Cotton", "On Top of Old Smokey", and "Midnight Special", which the group had recorded in 1975. This was the only song released by ABBA that was not written by any of the members themselves. On the single, "Medley" was actually a remix of the original 1975 version that had been issued on the German charity album Stars Im Zeichen Eines Guten Sterns (Polydor). However, the 1978 mix is very similar, so much so that a mistake was made in the booklet notes of the 1994 4-CD boxed set Thank You for the Music. It turned out that the 1975 mix was included in that set but it was claimed to be the 1978 mix. The Medley mystery was allegedly solved when the UK single master tapes were returned by Epic Records to Polar Music in Sweden in the early 2000s. As the UK tapes had definitely included the 1978 mix, it then became possible to determine which mix was which. An explanation of this by ABBA expert Carl Magnus Palm appeared on his website.^{[citation needed]}

Reception

Despite the group's negative views of the song, "Summer Night City" was another sizeable hit for ABBA, topping the charts in Ireland, Finland and Sweden; the group's last No. 1 in their home country. It also reached the Top 5 in Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Rhodesia, and Switzerland, the Top10 in Canada by Atlantic Records and finally appeared a year later on Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (ABBA album).

"Summer Night City" was, however, the group's 1st single since "S.O.S." not to reach the UK Top 3. Despite this, the song makes small appearances in the musical Mamma Mia!. Samples from the song appear in scrambled "nightmare" form during the ent'racte, and is also scene change music between the songs "The Winner Takes It All" and "Take a Chance on Me."

Chart positions

Chart (1978)	Position
Australian Singles Chart	13
Austrian Singles Chart	18
Belgian Singles Chart	2
British Singles Chart	5
Canadian Singles Chart	34
Dutch Singles Chart	5
Eurochart Hot 100	1
Finnish Singles Chart	1
French Singles Chart	15
German Singles Chart	6
Irish Singles Chart	1
Japanese Singles Chart	24
New Zealand Singles Chart	37
Norwegian Singles Chart	3
Swedish Singles Chart	1
Mexico	10
Zimbabwe	4
Swiss Singles Chart	5

Preceded by "Three Times a Lady" by The Commodores	Irish Singles Chart number-one single 23 September 1978	Succeeded by "One Day at a Time" by Gloria
Preceded by "Skateboard" by Magnum Bonum	Swedish Singles Chart number-one single 6 October 1978 – 13 October 1978	Succeeded by "You're The One That I Want" by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
Preceded by "You're The One That I Want" by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John	Eurochart Hot 100 Singles number-one single 12 October 1978	Succeeded by "Summer Nights" by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John

Cover versions

• The digipack edition of Swedish Symphonic metal band Therion's Secret of the Runes album from 2001 contains their cover of this song. There is also a live version on their Live in Midgård album. They also produced a music video for the studio version of the cover.
• Swedish musician Nils Landgren covered the song on his album Funky ABBA from 2004.
• In 2005, Israeli DJ Offer Nissim did a dance cover of "Summer Night City" on his album First Time. This version omits some of the original lyrics of the song and features singer Maya Simantov on vocals.
• Dance versions of the song have been recorded by Angeleyes on their 1999 ABBAdance album, Jill Dreski, Astaire, Australian singer Donna Burke on the 2001 Japanese ABBA Ibiza Caliente Mix compilation, and DJ Ensamble on the 2006 album Trancing Queen.
• Various eurotrance cover remixes by Abbacadabra were released through Almighty Records during the 1990s. The song was most recently included on the 2008 compilation We Love ABBA: The Mamma Mia Dance Collection. Audio samples can be heard on the official Almighty Records website.
• In 2009, Russian singer Roma Kenga released an English language eurotrance cover of the song.