ABBA – Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)

The Song They Almost Threw Away For A Man Called Rubber Ball

Released on October 12, 1979, ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” became one of the Swedish quartet’s biggest hits, topping charts across Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, and Switzerland while reaching number three in the UK. But here’s what almost nobody knows: the band nearly scrapped it entirely for a completely different song called “Rubber Ball Man”. That track featured the classic arrangement with both Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sharing lead vocals alongside sweeping classical strings. They even rehearsed it for their 1979 tour under the title “Under My Sun”. Then someone in the group decided the disco-driven track with its pulsing synthesizer riff would work better, and the world almost lost what would become their most successful song in Japan.

The single dominated international charts with uncommon ferocity for a band already at commercial peak. It spent eight weeks in the UK Top 40, held at number three by Lena Martell and Doctor Hook. The track became their fourth of five hit singles in 1979, the others all coming from the Voulez-Vous album. What makes the chart performance particularly strange is that Polar Music never released it as a single in Sweden, their home country. Instead, Swedish record stores imported copies from the UK Epic Records release, and those imports alone pushed it to number 16 on the Swedish sales chart. The song later appeared on Greatest Hits Vol. 2 and eventually the mega-selling Gold: Greatest Hits compilation. On July 20, 2025, it crossed one billion streams on Spotify, becoming only the second ABBA song to reach that milestone after “Dancing Queen”.

Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus wrote and composed the track with Agnetha handling the lead vocals, weaving the story of a lonely woman longing for romantic connection while drawing parallels between her dark solitude and the happy endings enjoyed by movie stars. The working title was “Been and Gone and Done It”, which gives absolutely no indication of what the finished song became. The iconic melody line came from an ARP Odyssey synthesizer, that churning riff that drives the entire production. Recording took place at Polar Music Studios in Stockholm during August 1979, timed specifically to promote the group’s North American and European concert tour. The full version ran 4 minutes and 45 seconds, though Atlantic Records in North America edited it down to 3 minutes and 36 seconds by chopping the opening instrumental and shortening the bridge.

The Atlantic edit remains fascinating because it marked one of only two times the label commercially released an edited ABBA single during their North American distribution period, the other being a radio edit of “Chiquitita”. That shortened version has never appeared on any commercial CD from Polar or Universal, making it something of a lost artifact for completists. The promotional copies were already pressed when Atlantic suddenly cancelled the US and Canadian release entirely, presumably because disco had become toxic in America following the infamous Disco Demolition Night in Chicago that July. The band recorded a Spanish version titled “¡Dame! ¡Dame! ¡Dame!” in 1980 to promote Gracias Por La Música in Latin America and Spanish-speaking markets, releasing it both as a standalone single and as a double A-side.

The song appeared on Greatest Hits Vol. 2 released in October 1979, just weeks after the tour began. The B-side everywhere was “The King Has Lost His Crown” from the Voulez-Vous album. Andersson and Ulvaeus fiercely protected their catalog from sampling requests, turning down dozens of artists over the years. They’d said yes to the Fugees for “Rumble in the Jungle” five years earlier, and that was it. When Madonna came calling in 2005 wanting to sample the instrumental riff for her track “Hung Up”, she sent an emissary to Stockholm with a handwritten letter begging for permission. Andersson later admitted he framed that letter, and after hearing just 30 seconds of what Stuart Price and Madonna had created, he knew they had to say yes. The copyright split went 50-50, and Madonna’s track became a worldwide smash.

Cover versions multiplied across decades and genres, from A-Teens’ Swedish pop rendition that went gold in 1999 to Cher’s club banger produced by Mark Taylor in 2018 that peaked at number four on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart. The Leather Nun, Sisters of Mercy, and Erasure all tackled it with varying degrees of darkness and camp. It appeared in both the Mamma Mia! stage musical and film. French reality show contestants from Star Academy 1 recorded it in 2001, and Celtic Thunder’s Ryan Kelly made it a touring staple. The song featured twice on Top of the Pops in October and November 1979, with the promo showing the group performing and recording at Polar Studios. A live version from their 1979 tour eventually surfaced on Live at Wembley Arena in 2014.

What makes “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” endure is how it captures desperate loneliness without wallowing in self-pity. Agnetha’s vocal delivery walks that perfect line between vulnerability and strength, the narrator acknowledging her situation but refusing to surrender to it. The production sounds both of its era and timeless, that synthesizer riff cutting through everything like a beacon in the darkness the song describes. Parts of “Rubber Ball Man” would later resurface in “Under Attack”, so nothing truly got wasted. But imagine a world where ABBA chose the string-laden ballad over the disco pulse, where Madonna never got her sample because the song never existed, where a billion Spotify streams went to some other track. Sometimes the best decisions happen when you trust your gut and throw the safe choice away.

Live performance from ABBA’s 1979-80 tour of North America and Europe.
Executive producer: Curt Edman
Director: Urban Larsson
Produced by Swedish Television (SVT) and Polar Music International AB