After their success at Eurovision, ABBA needed a solid follow-up single to establish themselves as a serious act. In most countries, the song chosen was “Honey, Honey”, one of the later songs to be recorded for the “Waterloo” album, and it was released as a single in April 1974.
At first glance, the song appears to be extremely cliché European schlager music . At any rate the title is very appropriate, because the melody is sickly sweet, in particular the prominent strings throughout the recording. The girls’ vocals are similarly light and airy, with very soothing backing vocals blended into the instrumentation. However, in many ways, the song is actually very cleverly constructed, and not cliché at all, particularly from a lyrical standpoint.
At first, the lyrics seem to be those of any other love song, with lines such as “there’s no other place in this world that I rather would be”, and Björn’s short passage where he talks about not wanting to hurt the girl that’s in love with him. However, when the lyrics are looked at more closely, it becomes obvious that it is about something much more risqué – the lead vocals call the man in question a ‘love machine’, ‘doggone beast’ and other such things, and she mentions him ‘doing his thing’. It soon becomes clear that the lyrics are very sexually-charged, and suddenly, the whole song takes on a whole new slant.
The structure of the song itself is also very interesting. Whilst the vast majority of songs have a ‘verse, chorus, verse, chorus’ approach, “Honey, Honey” works differently. For a start, there’s no chorus – instead, each verse blends seamlessly with the next, but with the lines “honey, honey” being emphasised throughout, and ultimately the song fades out as it heads into an intricate middle section. This was very uncommon for its time, and it is done very subtly.
Ultimately, when the song was released as a single, it was a considerable success in many countries. While it didn’t top the charts anywhere, in West Germany it stayed in the top 5 for an astounding four months, and it was also a top 5 hit in other European countries such as Austria and Switzerland. It was also a mild hit throughout the Anglophonic world – it was a top 20 hit in New Zealand and Canada, and a top 30 hit in Australia and United States.
Interestingly, the song was not released as a single in the UK. Instead, a remixed version of their previous song “Ring Ring” was released there – some electric guitars and saxophones were overdubbed, and the whole recording was very slightly slowed down. However, the song was not a big hit – it only peaked at no.32. Instead, a British group called Sweet Dreams released a cover version there, and it managed to peak at no.10. Elsewhere, the song was bested by ABBA’s original version.
Ultimately, this single further solidified ABBA’s status throughout continental Europe. However, they had not yet managed to make a lasting impact on the Anglophonic world yet. This was especially worrying with regards to the UK – the group risked becoming known as ‘Eurovision one-hit wonders’ forever. Nonetheless, not long after the single’s release, the group began writing and recording songs for their next studio album, which was aptly called just “ABBA”. Eventually, the songs on this album would come to prove that ABBA as a group were about more than just the bombastic performances seen at Eurovision, but that they were genuinely talented and accomplished artists.
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