ABBA have shared the latest in their series of new lyric videos for their classic hits. The new clip, again directed by Tom Readdy and Lucy Dawkins at the award-winning Yes Please Productions, is for their 1979 hit “Does Your Mother Know.”
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The video uses visuals from the original promo for the song, combined with bold graphics and fonts for Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus’ lyrics. “Does Your Mother Know,” with lead vocals by Björn, was the second single from ABBA’s sixth studio album Voulez-Vous, following the lead song “Quiquitita,” which was itself given the lyric video treatment in March last year. Other new promos in the series have included “Waterloo,” “Voulez-Vous,” “SOS,” and “Lay All Your Love On Me.”
“Does Your Mother Know” was a No.1 hit in Belgium and reached the Top 5 in the UK, Ireland, Finland, and the Netherlands. It reached No.19 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was singled out by the magazine as one of the best cuts from the Greatest Hits Vol. 2 compilation, released to coincide with ABBA’s tours of Europe and North America in the last quarter of 1979.
The synth bass intro to the song was one of the first things to be created in the studio by Benny Andersson with his new purchase, the Yamaha GX-1 synthesizer. In a Polar Music article in 2011, he said thatv programming and saving sounds on the GX-1 was a laborious process that took “for-bloody-ever.” He revealed that it cost over 300,000 kronor, which was about US$68,000 at the time), “which was and still is quite a lot of money for a synthesizer.” When he came up with the “Does Your Mother Know” intro, “Then I thought: Worth every penny!”
In other news, the official ABBA website recently marked the 73rd birthday of Agnetha Fältskog, on April 5, with an edition of its “Short Quiz” series about her life and times. It can be accessed here.
The 50th anniversary of ABBA’s debut album Ring Ring will be marked with a number of special editions, which can be pre-ordered now.