Old music: Abba – If It Wasn't for the Nights
Don't be deceived by the relentlessly upbeat disco backing – the band singing it are wallowing in post-breakup depression
"I got appointments, work I have to do," the Abba girls sing merrily on this 1979 track, before trilling: "Keepin' me so busy all the day through." That's nice, you think – here are two people who seem to really enjoy their work.
After that, you stop listening to the lyrics. It's hard not to with those soaring strings, the thrilling extended "ohhhhhh" that interupt the verses and the way the piano-led chorus is introduced by Agnetha yelling "Yeaaaaaaah, so bad!". This is a track so uplifting it practically forces you to shimmy around the lounge and clap your hands twice at the end of each bar (not that I do this alone or anything).
It comes as something of a shock four or five listens in, when you realise that If It Wasn't for the Nights is actually about contemplating suicide (or at least a state of extreme despair). The "work" that seemed so fulfilling is actually just a handy distraction to mask the cracks of post-breakup depression: "I got my business to help me through the day, People I must write to, bills I must pay. But everything's so different when night's on its way."
From the title – not to mention the style of music – you'd be forgiven for thinking the nights were what the singer might look forward to, that precious time when they can abandon their mundane life and hit the dancefloor. But no, in this song the protagonist says she "fears time when shadows start to fall/ Sittin' here alone and starin' at the wall."
Balancing dark lyrics with a shiny pop exterior is hardly something Abba alone mastered, but If It Wasn't for the Nights takes the forumla to an extreme. How did this song not become one of the band's best-known records? It would be the jewel in most bands' careers. Yet for Abba it was one of just three tracks from their disco-flavoured Voulez Vous that failed to make it as an A or B side – mere album filler. Madness, sheer madness.
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